A weird scheduling quirk has the Hawks playing a pair of games in a row against the Los Angeles Kings over the next three days, with the first arriving on Thursday night out in California.

These two teams met in Chicago in on Oct. 26, with the Kings snuffing out most of the Hawks’ offense during a 3-1 victory for the visitors. LA’s been up and down since: they lost three of four on both sides of Halloween, then won four straight before losing five of seven, including a 3-1 loss to the Capitals on Tuesday night. The Kings are in third place in the Pacific Division with 31 points (12-7-7) in 26 games but have a goal differential of minus-4 and have been especially subpar at home this season with a 3-5-3 record there. LA’s been closer to average than good so far, which is why it remains in the middle of a heavy pack of teams that could or could not be postseason participants come April.

The song remains the same for LA: it’ll clog up the neutral zone and make sustained offensive time a rarity but likely won’t run anyone else out of the building with its own offense. Adrian Kempe leads the scorers with 23 points (9 G, 14 A) in 26 games, followed by Quinton Byfield (4 G, 15 A in 26 games) and Kevin Fiala (team-high 10 G, 8 A in 26 games). The scoring drops off a bit from there, with a pair of senior citizens by pro sports standards clocking in next: Anze Kopitar with 14 points in 22 games during his victory lap of a season and (/vomit) Corey Perry with 12 points in 20 games. While Kopitar remains pretty good despite his age, having one player near 40 and one player at 40 in a team’s top-five scoring is indicative of the relative lack of offensive firepower this team possesses.

With Darcy Kuemper faring well in net, though, that hasn’t been too much of an issue yet. His numbers are solid if not spectacular: 8-5-5 record, .908 save percentage and 2.37 goals-against average. Old friend Anton Forsberg is the backup and he’s been decent at 4-2-2, .894 and 2.69, respectively. The blue line does have one gaping hole in it with Drew Doughty placed on injured reserve in mid-November, and the team is 2-2-3 in seven games without his still team-high ATOI of 22:33. Without Doughty around, the blue line is comprised of guys who are still proving themselves at the NHL level (Brandt Clarke) or well past whatever could be considered their prime (Cody Ceci, Joel Edmundson, Brian Dumoulin). The No. 1 defenseman in town is probably Mikey Anderson now and he seems to be the closest thing this team has to a player worthy of that label — maybe even moreso than Doughty at this point — but it’s also hard to take someone too seriously when their name is “Mikey.”

No lines to report from LA’s morning skate, so here’s the lineup from that Tuesday loss to Washington:

Tonight’s projected @LAKings lines from DTLA:
📺: @FanDuelSN_West
📻: ESPN LA App, LA Kings App, @TuLigaRadio pic.twitter.com/k7X99u8QLB

— LA Kings PR (@LAKingsPR) December 3, 2025

Regardless of who’s on the ice, though, LA has always been a team that buys into its neutral zone-clogging system, so the Hawks will be in for a grind-it-out type of game that has caused this team fits before. Any opportunities to set up in the offensive zone will be precious, so hopefully No. 98 is on the ice when that occurs because he’s been the most consistent singular force on this team for several weeks. Based on the morning skate, it’ll be the same Chicago lineup as the one that faced VGK on Tuesday. Here’s that lineup:

Knight vs. Knights:

Greene-Bedard-Burakovsky
Moore-Nazar-Bertuzzi
Teräväinen-Dickinson-Mikheyev
Donato-Dach

Vasic-Crevier
Levshunov-Kaiser
Grzelcyk-Murphy
Rinzel

Knight
Söderblom

— Mark Lazerus (@marklazerus.bsky.social) December 2, 2025 at 8:36 PM

Consecutive games against the same team ensures they’ll be sick of each other by the end of Saturday’s game, although those unpleasantries may arrive well before then. This game also provides a chance for this youthful lineup to execute on a gameplan that could be more tailored to the opponent, considering the set of back-to-back games here. We’ll see if they learned anything from that October outing as well.

Let’s go Hawks.

Tale of the Tape

Blackhawks — Statistic — Kings
46.50% (26th) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 53.09% (6th)
45.62% (27th) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 50.35% (14th)
3.19 (9th) — Goals per game — 2.62 (t-28th)
2.88 (13th) — Goals against per game — 2.62 (6th)
47.2% (t-27th) — Faceoffs — 48.9% (20th)
22.8% (9th) — Power play — 13.8% (29th)
84.4% (5th) — Penalty kill — 80.5% (t-19th)
(All stats from this season)

How to watch

When: 9 p.m. CT
Where: Crypto.com Arena, Los Angeles
TV: N/A (This game is exclusively on ESPN+)
Webstream: ESPN+/Hulu
Radio: WGN 720