A Look Ahead + Monday Morning Roster Moves, Lemieux Skating Again

Last updated Dec 20, 2022 Edit Source

• News post

• Zach Dooley

Beginning with Saturday’s win over San Jose, the Kings have begun a stretch of 11 of 14 games at Crypto.com Arena. The three that aren’t? One-off games that won’t require more than one night at a hotel on the road.

• Rasmus Kupari
• Jordan Spence

• Todd McLellan

# Todd McLellan

We used our first third up pretty quickly and we’re into the second third fairly quick. The game we played in Buffalo the other night was our 32nd and I think that’s the game where Colorado is going to go into their Christmas break, that shows you how far ahead we are in games played. Six is a significant number at this time of the year, but there’s also nothing we can do about it.

We just have to continue to play. If you take – and I explained this to the players at the one-third mark – if you take those third segments, 27 games or whatever it was, 27 and a half, if you can come out of that with 32 points each time that gives you 96. 96 is kind of the cut line, so if those are the segmented goals and we used our first third up pretty quick.

Around Christmas, everybody’s schedules get compressed, you have mandatory Christmas days off so you lose practice days there too. We have looked at the schedule though and we are at home a little bit more, so we’re looking forward to that.

We’re always looking at the schedule and obviously the 11 of the last 16 were on the road and that’s not an easy task, but in our next 30-day segment we only play three road games. We’re going to go to Arizona, Colorado and Vegas and those are they’re not easy trips, they’re not easy games to play, but they’re not seven-game road trips, so it does give us some home time. Home time usually means more rest and home time usually means more practice.