Byfield out Saturday - Todd on the Clarke decision - can the LA defense play physically enough
# Byfield out Saturday - Todd on the Clarke decision - can the LA defense play physically enough
# Contributors
# Summary
Before tonight’s red not Playmaking Chart drops and to prepare you for the Toronto Maple Leafs’ annual visit, here’s an account of the activity at Toyota Sports Performance Center Thursday morning, where the LA Kings offered hints at their lineup and blunt assessments of their play. More Todd McLellan quotes that perked my ears up in a moment.
# Players
# Staff
# Notes and Quotes
# Todd McLellan
I don’t think that anything’s going to change as far as roster personnel from now until tomorrow, but there could be a lineup change.
Kopi’s line, and I’m not putting all on Kevin by any means, has been out-chanced the majority of games they’ve played in, and we can’t keep going that route, so Gabe will play there tomorrow. I think Gabe can make some of the plays that Kevin makes, as well. But we try and stabilize lines and maybe it’ll help Kevin with some other linemates, as well.
It’s what that line is doing outside the blue line, neutral zone, D zone, that has to get a little bit better. And that’s not on Fiala completely. It’s the whole group on the ice.
Bantam coaches are using this type of language. Sometimes you’ve got to punt and wait to get the ball back. Right now, our decision of punting is forcing stuff and it’s coming back to bite us.
When we look at the past, Olli Maatta is basically the one guy that left our team and had some size. Stech was here for a little bit, but he wasn’t a very big man. We’re probably bigger on the blue line this year than we were last year with Drew being back. Clarkie’s a 6-foot-2 guy. We’re bigger there now, so it’s not lack of size, it’s just getting it done.
If there’s any way the spirit of a group can get destroyed is giving up chances over and over again on a power play. Your mindset goes to offense completely. You forget there’s a checking element to a power play as well. You tend to cheat a bit because you’re supposed to be in an offensive situation, and that’s what hurt us [Thursday night], so we talked about fixing that because we believe we’d earn another power play or two and getting back to work. Even in the second period we never gave up our first chance until the midway mark. So we recovered well, we just consistently don’t stay with it.
We will meet as a group over the next day or two. This morning, the last thing we talked about this morning was whether [Brandt Clarke] would be staying with the club or not. I know that [decision’s] coming. I don’t have that answer for you because we haven’t had that discussion.