11-10 Preview – Projected Lineup + Chicago Rematch, Importance Of Faceoffs, Turcotte to ONT

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• News post

• Zach Dooley

The Kings are back at it on home ice this evening against Chicago, with a rematch against the Blackhawks from last week in Illinois on the docket.

• Jonathan Quick
• Blake Lizotte
• Phillip Danault
• Anze Kopitar
• Rasmus Kupari
• Alex Turcotte

• Todd McLellan

# Todd McLellan

We’re into the Chicago game, we’ll take that test tonight and I think that there can be improvements.

In Chicago, it was a little bit more at 5-on-5 when we were their building, there weren’t a significant amount of penalties either way and sometimes that favors us. We like to play 5-on-5 and after taking the test tonight, we’ll see if we can apply some of the things we practiced the last couple of days and see if we can improve in those areas after practicing them.

I don’t think there’s a team in the league that’s going to recreate their identity in one a week, it’s impossible. They have structure, they have a new coach, they’ve had a chance to work on it and they’re more likely polishing things up and reaffirming what they want to do. If we have a good pre-scout, we should have a pretty good idea of what some of the tactics are and we’ll present that to the team using as much information as we can from our game in Chicago, versus the game Winnipeg, but there are always little tidbits from the most recent game that that we can look at.

It’s very important, especially on the penalty kill. [Blake Lizotte] has become a very trusting penalty killer and if he can start those in those situations, which always starts with a faceoff in your end, if he’s hot on a given night it takes some minutes away from other players. That’s often a good thing and it gets him on the ice more too.

# Blake Lizotte

Both teams take pride, I know we do for sure with where we’re at in the circle. When you have a tough matchup, I think all four of their centermen are good and I think all four of ours are solid as well. I think it should be a good battle-level test for us more than anything. When it’s two good centermen taking a draw, sometimes it comes down to who wants it more and it’s not just the centers there, but the wingers too.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s too much on my end, just getting stronger and whether the league wants it or not, the older you get, you get a little more leniency and I think that contributes to the percentages. One faceoff, every other game, that you might not get otherwise, that adds up at the end of the year, a full percentage point.