captain An\u017ee Kopitar, who will retire at season\u2019s end<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe homestand featured a 1-0 shutout of the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday, two games after a sloppy yet vital 7-6 edging of the Toronto Maple Leafs. It also saw a split with Nashville, with both games requiring shootouts.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single guy in this locker room is putting the team first and the winning mentality first. We\u2019re trying to win games, whether it\u2019s one-nothing or 7-6,\u201d Kopitar said.<\/p>\n
On the road trip, the Kings will face three teams that are not bound for the postseason. They also control their own destiny: if they collect four or more of a possible six points, they will qualify for spring hockey regardless of what any team chasing them accomplishes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re set up pretty well right now, but there\u2019s more business to take care of,\u201d Kopitar said.<\/p>\n
The Kings\u2019 ostensibly favorable schedule will be accompanied by the obvious pitfalls of a dense slate with travel, as well as some more subtle ones.<\/p>\n
The Seattle Kraken and Calgary Flames have each won five of their past six meetings with the Kings. Seattle has taken all three matchups this season, with both of their goaltenders performing effectively against the Kings over time. Calgary has won two of three, and Dustin Wolf has a career 4-1-0 record with a .958 save percentage and 1.18 goals-against average when facing the black-and-silver-clad club he grew up supporting.<\/p>\n
The Kings have beaten Vancouver three times already this season, including twice during the Canucks\u2019 latest doldrums, during which they\u2019ve dropped 10 of 11 decisions. Yet the Kings have only swept Vancouver once in their history, way back in 1980-81.<\/p>\n
The arrival of Artemi Panarin and the promotion of interim head coach D.J. Smith have both invigorated the Kings\u2019 offense. Since the coaching change, the Kings are scoring more than half a goal per game more than they were under Jim Hiller, moving from the bottom of the league to the middle of the pack offensively during that span.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe group obviously has a lot more energy. It\u2019s hard to not notice that out there. We\u2019re coming a little bit harder on the forecheck and we\u2019re creating a lot more offense because of it. I feel like we\u2019re trying to play faster,\u201d said goalie Anton Forsberg, whose stellar play of late should assure him at least two of the three starts on the trip.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a loud human being in the room, and he\u2019s always happy,\u201d Forsberg continued. \u201cIt\u2019s been good for our group. It\u2019s great. You need someone to be able to speak to the team and get the message out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2013\u2013 The Kings will take to the skies, hoping for a soft landing in the Northwest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5126],"tags":[5,186,1760,240,5303,793,145,5304,5302,4,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-551362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-kings","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-kings","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-kings","12":"tag-lakings","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-kings","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-losangeleskings","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116393766903899213","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}