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Kings @ Flyers: Five things to watch |
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The LA Kings are taking on the Philadelphia Flyers tonight to end their trip through the Metropolitan Division. So far this trip has been not what they’ve hoped as the Kings have lost all three games thus far in their four game trip and haven’t looked particularly good in any of them.
However, the Kings season has been completely made up of hot and cold streaks. They started the year 12-2-2, then went on to seven of their next eight games, and then proceeded to win eight straight before this road trip.
This is something the Flyers understand as well. Philadelphia is currently in a hot stretch as they’ve won their last six games. However, prior to that they had lost 10 in a row and didn’t look good at all during that stretch.
Tonight’s matchup will be the second and final one of the season. In the first game, the Kings won 2-0 during the season opener for LA. Last season, the two teams split the series with both teams winning their home games.
Five things too watch
1.Offensive Pressure: The Kings have not looked good offensively throughout this entire trip. While they haven’t necessarily been outshot in each of their games, the Kings haven’t shown the dominance in the opposing team’s end like we’ve seen in the past. Need to use some of those big bodies to cycle the puck and make the Flyers work for possession.
2. Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde: As I said earlier, both teams tend to have hot and cold streaks. Right now the Flyers are burning hot and the Kings are cooling down. It almost seems like both teams have a completely different identity depending which way the wind is blowing. So what are we going to see tonight? Will it be the dominant team the Kings were when they were at home, or the team that was happy to get a point against the Islanders on Saturday.
3. Flyers Top Guns: The duo of Claude Giroux and Sean Couturier has been on fire for most of the season despite any lulls the team has had. Captain Giroux is having a rebound season where he has 13 goals and 35 points in 32 games. Compare that to last year he had 14 goals and 58 points in 82 games. Just like Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar, he’s proving he’s still a stud.
Meanwhile, Sean Couturier is well on his way to blowing up his career highs in… well everything. Not known for his offensive abilities, the 25-year-old has tied his career high in goals with 15 and is nine points away from matching his career high there. This is only 32 games in.
4. Brian Elliott: Elliott has started in each of the Flyers games during the six game winning streak. During that span he’s allowed nine goals with a GAA of 1.48 and a save percentage of .949. Assuming he plays (I would imagine he is with the hot hand), the question is will have run out of gas soon as he’s endured a back-to-back situation during this stretch. LA will need to throw everything they can at him.
5. Penalties: LA got into some penalty trouble against the Islanders that really hurt them. Some of those calls were iffy but they can’t put themselves in that situation where they’re killing penalties for most of the game. This effects their ability to put pressure in the offensive zone and give the Flyers (in this case) confidence going up against one of the stingiest defenses in the league.
Vice-versa, the Kings need to find a way to draw more penalties for their own power plays. The best way to do that is the top line’s ability to cycle the puck down low and force the Flyers into being more physical in order to get the puck off of big bodies like Alex Iafallo, Anze Kopitar, and Dustin Brown. For the speedier guys like Pearson, Kempe, and Toffoli, they need to use their speed and move their feet to force guys into taking a penalty in order to stop a scoring chance.
Projected lineup (dailyfaceoff.com)
Marian Gaborik - Anze Kopitar - Dustin Brown
Tanner Pearson - Adrian Kempe - Tyler Toffoli
Alex Iafallo - Nick Shore - Trevor Lewis
Andy Andreoff - Torrey Mitchell - Jonny Brodzinski
Jake Muzzin - Drew Doughty
Kurtis MacDermid - Alec Martinez
Derek Forbort - Christian Folin
Jonathan Quick its expected to start
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