The practices have been few and far between for the Kings since the regular season got underway last month.<\/p>\n
Not including morning skates, only some of which have included the full playing roster, there have been just seven team practices in the past 24 days leading up to this morning\u2019s on-ice session.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s due to the amount of travel and limited time off the team has had during the first month of the campaign, but Monday represented a day to get back to work with more time spent on skills with the coaching staff.<\/p>\n
Notably, there were changes to the team\u2019s formation, both up front and on the back end.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how the team lined up for drills this morning \u2013<\/p>\n
Armia \u2013 Kopitar \u2013 Kempe
Fiala \u2013 Byfield \u2013 Laferriere
Kuzmenko \u2013 Danault \u2013 Moore
Malott \u2013 Turcotte \u2013 Perry
Helenius<\/p>\n
Anderson \u2013 Doughty
Edmundson \u2013 Clarke
Dumoulin \u2013 Ceci<\/p>\n
Kuemper \/ Forsberg<\/p>\n
Starting with the forwards, Joel Armia received reps on the team\u2019s No. 1 line alongside Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe. Armia has been shuffled around quite a bit both during games and practices, and has had a chance to get to know the rest of the attackers in the lineup. Now, it seems he\u2019ll be trusted with playing alongside the team\u2019s captain and leading scorer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the offensive zone, he\u2019s a presence around the net, under the goal line hanging on to pucks. I think one thing we\u2019ve seen from Joel is that he has the ability to do that,\u201d Head Coach Jim Hiller said after today\u2019s practice. \u201cHe\u2019s at the net for sure, he can hold on to it a little bit and maybe get Kopi and Juice there for some support, and just basically play the game he\u2019s played so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armia has helped chip in offensively with a modest six points from his first 13 games as a member of the Kings, but the attributes Hiller mentioned above have made him a versatile forward capable of playing anywhere in the lineup and contributing in different roles.<\/p>\n
The Finnish attacker said he was looking forward to the chance to play with some of the team\u2019s top players but wasn\u2019t viewing it as anything more than a new opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re great players, obviously,\u201d Armia said. \u201cI had fun on the ice [during practice], for sure. I\u2019m going to try to be heavy on the forecheck and try to get the puck to those guys and create more space for them to play because they\u2019re so skilled with the puck and can make plays.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other side of the coin to the lineup change, however, is that for the first time since he was acquired at the trade deadline from Philadelphia, Andrei Kuzmenko won\u2019t be on the ice alongside Kopitar and Kempe.<\/p>\n
Kuzmenko snapped a six-game goal scoring drought on Saturday when he netted the Kings\u2019 lone tally against the Devils, and has seven points (3-4=7) from the team\u2019s 13 contests this season. His new spot was with the other two forwards who have been a pair together for multiple seasons, in Phillip Danault and Trevor Moore.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t that Kuzmenko was a prolific scorer after he came to the Kings for the stretch run last season, scoring five times in 22 regular season appearances, all of which came at even strength, but he was a clear fit with Kopitar and Kempe, posting 12 assists and a plus-6 rating. And he was the missing piece that helped the power play produce at a much higher clip, adding five man-advantage helpers.<\/p>\n
Maybe for the Kings, this move is as much about trying to help Danault and Moore, who combined have only two even-strength goals between the two of them and are missing the third member of their usual trio in Warren Foegele, who is out of the lineup with an injury, as it is about Kuzmenko, who Hiller complimented after Saturday night\u2019s loss.<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u2019t the only change made that affected Kuzmenko, who was also replaced on the team\u2019s primary power play unit by Corey Perry during the reps they took this morning.<\/p>\n
Perry has had the hot hand since joining the lineup in St. Louis, scoring five times and adding a pair of assists to total seven points in seven games. Perry assumed the net-front role with that unit, which is exactly where he\u2019s been to score all of his goals.<\/p>\n
Kuzmenko was working with Danault and Alex Laferriere on the second group, as well as defenders Drew Doughty and Brandt Clarke.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hoping that Kuzy gets to touch the puck more on the second power play,\u201d Hiller said. \u201cNow, he probably doesn\u2019t want to be there, but now hopefully he\u2019s getting it more. For whatever reasons, he wasn\u2019t getting the puck enough with that first unit. The end of last year, it kind of ran through Kuzy a lot and we just weren\u2019t getting him the puck. So we hope to rest him a little bit and get him the puck and allow him to use some better creativity with the second unit.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it relates to the team\u2019s defensive alignment, the change today was a return to where they began the year, with Mikey Anderson moving back up to the top pair and reuniting with Doughty. The middle pair of Joel Edmundson and Brandt Clarke was untouched, and Brian Dumoulin, who has been alongside Doughty since a change on Oct. 12, was back to being deployed alongside Cody Ceci.<\/p>\n
While they haven\u2019t been paired together at 5-on-5 in three weeks, Dumoulin and Ceci have still been on the ice together as penalty killers and now it seems as if they\u2019ll be relied on in more situations moving forward.<\/p>\n
The split was necessary after the team\u2019s defense wasn\u2019t performing up to expectations during the first week of the season. But another result of that move was seeing Mikey Anderson, one of the team\u2019s best blueliners, play much less as a member of the third pair.<\/p>\n
Hiller mentioned Anderson\u2019s minutes as one of the primary reasons for returning to what the club hoped would be how the defenders could be deployed at the start of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cMikey hasn\u2019t been playing as much lately, certainly not as much as he played last season when Drew wasn\u2019t there. So it\u2019s about making sure that Mikey knows that he\u2019s a really critical piece for us and our team and our success and has been for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In referencing last season, Hiller and his staff had Anderson on the ice for an average of 22:41, a career-high and a jump of over two more minutes on average than the year prior in 2023-24. After the pairings changed and he has shifted to playing more with Ceci at 5-on-5, Anderson\u2019s only logged 20 minutes of ice time on five occasions. After Hiller commented that he would try to find more time for Clarke when the team returned from their most recent five-game road trip last week, Anderson\u2019s last two games only saw him play 15:24 and 15:57 while Clarke\u2019s time went up to season highs, 20:14 and 21:27.<\/p>\n
Expecting to see some more urgency from the Kings on Tuesday, as they search for their first win of 2025-26 at Crypto.com Arena. If I\u2019m being honest, that\u2019s not something I expected to type in the month of November.<\/p>\n
More to come tomorrow as LA gets ready to battle Winnipeg for the second time this season, with this one coming on home ice.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The practices have been few and far between for the Kings since the regular season got underway last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-270343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}