10-11 Preview - Projected Lineup + Opening Night Jitters, First Line Coming Together, Blake on Final Moves - LA Kings Insider

Last updated Oct 11, 2022 Edit Source

• News post

• Zach Dooley

• Alex Edler
• Kevin Fiala
• Anze Kopitar

• Todd McLellan
• Rob Blake

The regular season has arrived! The LA Kings host the Vegas Golden Knights this evening to open up a short, two-game homestand to begin the season.

• Projected third line: Alex Iafallo – Quinton Byfield – Gabe Vilardi
• Projected fourth line: Carl Grundstrom – Blake Lizotte – Arthur Kaliyev
• Projected starting goaltender: Jonathan Quick

I think when those don’t exist, you should probably worry a little bit. The palms get sweaty, you get a little bit excited. The staff, and I don’t just mean the coaching staff, the whole organizatio, should have jitters, they should be excited. We’ve put a month’s worth of work into opening night and we want to perform well. It’s always an interesting night. – Todd McLellan

I think you just get the excitement of the season starting. Sometimes you might feel a bit nervous, but I think that’s good. It means you’re focused, it means you’re ready, it means you’re excited. It’s all good stuff. – Alex Edler

There’s always excitement, a little bit nervous in a good way. With a new team, there’s even a little bit more excitement and I’m just ready to go. With how the summer’s been, now here we are for a new season. It goes fast and I can’t wait to get started in the new rink, with my new team. – Kevin Fiala

Puck protection is probably number one, the ability to protect in tight, tight areas, he’s got really good hockey vision there and IQ, making plays. He battles to protect pucks and he gives us an element that I’m not sure we have a whole bunch in this organization. He’s a natural scorer, a lot of high-end offense and he’s very creative in the types of plays he wants to make. – Rob Blake

It’s coming together. Having a couple of weeks now and few games under our belt, that always helps and I think it’s coming along nicely. Are we fully there yet, probably not, but we’re still learning about each other on the go and just trying to create and go from there. – Anze Kopitar

I felt on the ice that we took a step closer to where we want to be from Game 1 to the last game on Saturday. It was nice. For me to get comortable with the systems, knowing what to do and with those two guys, learning how they play and just reading the game. I felt very confident on Saturday so I’m hoping for that tonight as well. – Kevin Fiala

# Rob Blake

I think the way you look at it, if you’re in our 12 [forwards] or our starting six we would project upstairs, regardless of your situation in the CBA we’re making spot. Now, you have the ability to carry three extra players, whether it’s two forwards or two D, then we have to look a little bit at waivers and understand that we want to protect some of the assets and the players. There’s a few players that didn’t need waivers to go down but we also felt that they can still build their games [in the AHL]. Knock on wood, today is as healthy as we’ve been in a full year, on Sunday I think we saw every player back. We know we’re going to deal with injuries and we’re going to need some added depth down there that can come in and play.

We go over that constantly. If we’re in a healthy situation, we had players that had to be exposed to waivers and you go over when to put them on and when not to. You put them on early, but then a team could claim them and look at them, you put them on later, it allows teams that have had injuries [a chance]. Most of our situations, we wanted to get through our camp, make sure we were healthy coming into Sunday, then we’d sit down, discuss the lineup and then players that were waiver eligible and those that weren’t and go forward from there. Losing players on waivers, it’s part of the process, I think we have to understand that. When you start getting better and you have more quality players, you’ll be in those situations.

It was [a tough conversation] with those players. I still think those players can learn in the American League. Eventually, if a player is good enough, he’s an everyday NHL player, there will come a point where he’s not going to learn more in the American League, but I still think we can get some things accomplished with these players and that was our message. You did a terrific job, you’ve done everything we’ve asked you to do so far, we still think you can get better and we’re going to need you down the stretch.