Moving the needle “immensely,” Walker keeps grasp on lineup spot - faith in lineup balance despite top lines inconsistencies

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• News post

• Jon Rosen

The Kings are still figuring out which of their pegs corresponds with each hole. But they’ve got a lot of shiny, glossed-over pieces, and it’s only a matter of time before they’re properly sanded off and wedged into a finished product. As jagged as the fit has seemed at times out of the gate, it’s an interesting puzzle for Rob Blake and Todd McLellan to work on. Having too many options and limited space to accommodate viable contributors is about as good of a problem for a GM and coach to have.

• Sean Walker
• Anze Kopitar
• Kevin Fiala

• Todd McLellan
• Rob Blake

# Todd McLellan

The same one that our manager had, Blakey. Blakey talks about his experience all the time. It still lingers and you’ve got to do a lot of homework to get yourself healthy day after day after day, and [Sean Walker] is still dealing with that. But he’s doing a hell of a job.

The needle’s moved immensely from earlier in the year. The sense of timing – when to go, when not to. Pinches. Just game management situations, he’s been much better.

they’ve settled in and played way more towards what I believe they can do, or maybe even what they believe they can do from a defensive perspective, and I think Kevin being where Kevin is, it opened up a couple players in Kupari and Grunny …so it’s balanced our lines out and I think it’s helped us win a few games.

We feel we’re deeper with [Vilardi] playing where he’s at.

He’s proud of that [defensive play]. …And I think right now that’s a really good thing for our organization because we still have other players that are trying to do those things.

If you’re playing with him, you have to find open ice maybe when you don’t even expect it because he knows you’re over there somewhere, and some of our players have done a good job of that.

# Sean Walker

Our team as a whole wants to play fast and not let other teams get into their neutral zone forecheck, so we definitely want to have the mindset of quick-up as many pucks as we can.

I definitely feel more like myself – I feel comfortable, feel confident. I’m not really thinking about it anymore, I’m just kind of playing, and I feel like I’ve been playing pretty well, so I’m happy with where I’m at, and hopefully I’ll contribute a little offensively here soon, but defensively, I’ve been really happy with my game play.