The Kings landed in unseasonably warm Winnipeg, where it was a cozy 26 degrees on Monday, to conclude a demanding road swing that hasn’t gone swimmingly ahead of Tuesday’s finale against the Jets.
An intense trip tasked the Kings with confronting five playoff-caliber opponents and four of them in the span of just six nights, and it has seen the Kings win just one of four games thus far. They fell to an undermanned New York Rangers team, 5-2. Already down a defenseman, Ryan Lindgren, the Rangers lost another, K’Andre Miller, to a bizarre spitting incident in which he said he accidentally spat in the face of Kings defenseman Drew Doughty (Miller might be suspended and possibly for multiple matches). Forward Ryan Carpenter only played 13 seconds, meaning the Rangers played much of the contest with 15 skaters rather than the customary 18.
Yet Kings coach Todd McLellan said it was his team that didn’t have enough players to win, citing half a dozen or so passengers on the team bus Sunday.
“We were five or six players shy of having an opportunity to win,” McLellan said. “I’m not talking about the goaltender, I’m talking about positional players that just weren’t sharp enough, they didn’t make the plays they needed to make.”
McLellan said that while rolling three lines or two defense pairings, let alone both short-handed arrangements, wasn’t sustainable over time, in short spurts it could actually benefit a team. Much like when a coach shortens his bench late in a game, matchups are disrupted and higher-end players end up with more shifts, which McLellan said contributed to the Kings’ fourth line “taking it on the chin.”
The Kings ended up utilizing both goaltenders in the loss, and will likely turn back to Pheonix Copley on Tuesday in Winnipeg. Wingers Kevin Fiala and Adrian Kempe finished January strong and shared the team lead in February points despite neither putting ink on the scoresheet against the Rangers on Sunday or the New…
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