INSIDER: Playoff Practice Report, April 25

Practice day for the Kings, Insiders.

With the series sitting at 3-0 Colorado, could be the last time typing that sentence for a long time. Suppose that’s in their hands. 

The approach that Interim Head Coach D.J. Smith is taking isn’t along those lines. It’s a cliché, certainly. But he’s been in this position before, as an assistant coach and as a head coach in juniors. Earlier in his coaching career, he said he would’ve approached this day differently, mentally. Those thoughts would have been more prevalent. For him right now, it’s about one practice and one game, trying to win the next one on the schedule and then hopefully move on to Denver.

“I treat it like business,” he said. “Coaching for a long time, you still do your job and the job is to get the team ready to win a hockey game. I think when I was younger, I would have been thinking, oh my god, is this going to be the last game and things would have went through my head maybe like that, but that won't enter my mind. I think you try and win every single game. I think for me, I try to win an exhibition game. I'm trying to win a regular season game. What is the thing that the coach can do to get his team to win tomorrow? That's what I'm going to do. We're going to have some compete on the ice. We're going to do exactly what we've been doing for the last seven weeks, is prep the team to compete, prep the team to do it right, get them some reps and let's go.”

The same goes here for Anze Kopitar.

This could be the final practice of Kopitar’s NHL career. It’s crazy to think about. When he hits the ice tomorrow afternoon for Game 4, it could be the final game he’ll ever play. Even if the Kings win, it could be the final game he plays in Los Angeles, pending what would then be the results of Game 5 on Wednesday in Denver. It’s hard not to think about it here on the outside and I’m sure, deep down, it’s a thought that has crossed Kopitar’s mind as well. But it can’t be more than that. The Kings, led by their captain, have their focus on today’s practice and tomorrow’s game only. Win that one and you keep playing.

“We've got nothing to lose, so it's just going in, it's focusing on tomorrow, having a good start and just go from there,” Kopitar said. "To think about what's going to happen in a couple days, four or five days from now, there's really no need for that. It's just staying in the moment. We'll go down there tomorrow, play our asses off and we'll see where that takes us."

Yesterday, we heard from Smith that there were considerations to making wider-scale lineup changes entering Game 4. He said there could be as many as two players going into the lineup and potentially changes to alignment among the players who are already in. Based on what we saw today, he was true to his work on the players going in, with the bottom six looking quite different than it did in Games 1 - 3. Here is how the team aligned during today’s practice - 

Panarin – Kopitar – Kempe
Moore – Byfield – Laferriere
Turcotte – Laughton – Wright
Malott – Helenius – Ward
Kuzmenko – Joseph – Armia

Anderson – Doughty
Edmundson – Clarke
Dumoulin – Ceci
Moverare

Forsberg/Kuemper/George

So, we’ll see what kind of impact that has, if any. 

The Kings have lost three consecutive games, scoring a total of four goals. Three of those goals have been scored on the power play, which leaves one goal scored 5-on-5. One. The Kings have to try some things to score more goals than they have and I’d imagine what we saw today is their thoughts on how to do so, though naturally that is unconfirmed heading into Game 4 tomorrow. 

I look at this from two different perspectives – top six and bottom six. 

Up top, the Kings have the same first two lines as they did in the first couple of games here and as they have essentially since D.J. Smith took over. 

You could make changes to that group, which means doing things that are new. Things that do not have a track record of working but are different than what hasn’t worked until now. Or, you lean back on things that worked well during the regular season but have not worked so far in the playoffs. Quinton Byfield’s line was the best line in the playoffs for the Kings, by far. Do you break up a line that’s working in hopes that players who are playing well might help to get more out of others who haven’t produced? Or, do you not fix what isn’t broken and try to find your solutions elsewhere? 

In that area, the Kings are not making drastic changes. Both lines were very productive coming into the postseason and one has continued to be productive. At least there is a track record to lean on as opposed to just trying something to try it. 

Lower in the lineup, the Kings are going with a different look, with injecting more speed in mind. 

"Speed," Smith said earlier today. "Speed. Their D skate very well, their gaps are obviously really good. I think more speed, to get to pucks quicker, might give us a hand."

Coming out, based on today at least, would be two veteran players – Andrei Kuzmenko and Joel Armia – who played on the third line in Game 3. The third line had a really good Game 1 but I don’t think we’ve seen a ton from that group in Games 2 and 3. The changes today bring more speed and energy onto that line, less proven production, less impact on special teams. Alex Turcotte and Jared Wright are those kinds of players. Skaters and energy guys. They come with that kind of a mentality and could perhaps jolt the group, even though they don’t have the track records that Kuzmenko and Armia do. I’ll say this. It’s not a move the Kings would have made in the past, moving veteran players out in key moments, to give younger players and opportunity. Something to be said for that. 

In terms of skating ability, Turcotte ranked in the top 25 percent in the NHL in max speed burst during the regular season and both of the top two tracked categories, speed bursts of 22+ MPH and between 20 and 22 MPH. Wright had a smaller sample size but his top-end totals are extremely high. His top-end speed burst in the playoffs is the third highest of any player, behind only Cale Makar and Trevor Moore. I wouldn't say that Armia and Kuzmenko are slow players, but they don't have the same top-end speed that either Turcotte or Wright have. With Scott Laughton in the middle, who has better skating metrics than you'd think,  the third line is faster than it has been in this series.

The fourth line reverts back to the team’s most regularly used bottom-six line down the stretch. With Taylor Ward checking back in, alongside Samuel Helenius and Jeff Malott, D.J. Smith is going back to a line he leaned on a lot since he took over, minus the time that Ward missed with an injury. Should Ward play tomorrow, it would be his Stanley Cup Playoffs debut, after sitting out the first three games of the series. Malott is sneakily one of the team's fastest players. He actually has the fifth-fastest recorded speed burst in the entire playoffs and ranked in the top 20 percent around the NHL in speed bursts over 22 MPH this season, despite playing fourth-line minutes. Ward's top-end speed is higher than the players coming out, but he's more quick than fast and complements Helenius and Malott well.

I don’t have a passionate opinion either way about these moves, personally, but they had to try something. The issues for the Kings in this series have not been about who has played and who hasn’t. These moves might help, they might not. That it is different is something is really all you can look for and there's clearly thought that went into the moves. 

When you look at the scoring breakdown in this series, Colorado got a goal from their fourth line in Game 1. They got two goals from their third line in Game 2 and another goal from that unit in Game 3. The Kings have only scored on 5-on-5 goal in the series, from Trevor Moore in Game 3. Maybe this shakeup can unearth this team’s Logan O’Connor or Nicolas Roy. Maybe not. 

We will see how it goes, when the puck drops in Game 4 tomorrow afternoon, with a loss ending the season for the Kings on home ice.