It was back to the drawing board for coach Todd McLellan and his LA Kings at practice today.
Following a 3-1 loss to Anaheim on Tuesday night, McLellan had said – “I liked the combinations we came into the game with. I didn’t like the performance of the combinations 25 or 30 minutes in.”
And such is life when you’re trying to cobble something together while missing four players from your regular lineup.
With a new day in hand, McLellan and group are now busy preparing for a two-game set in Las Vegas this weekend. However, no discernable lineup changes were obvious just yet. All players from both the NHL roster and taxi squad were present at practice – excluding Matt Roy, who continues to recover from injuries suffered in a game last week.
From what I'm hearing, LA Kings are viewing Matt Roy as week to week.
They don't need the roster spot, as of yet. That's why he wasn't placed on IR today.
— John Hoven | The Mayor (@mayorNHL) February 3, 2021
Additionally, the ongoing roster shuffling remains alive and well. Martin Frk was officially removed from IR yesterday and is tracking toward playing on Friday. Matt Luff is also said to be very close to returning from injury and did skate with the team again today.
Housekeeping moves…
— LA Kings have sent Mark Alt, Austin Strand, Arthur Kaliyev to the taxi squad
— Boko Imama and Sean Durzi have been assigned to AHL Ontario
Nothing to see here.
— John Hoven | The Mayor (@mayorNHL) February 3, 2021
For now, the Taxi Squad is officially listed as – Anderson-Dolan, Kaliyev, Strand, Alt, and Jacob Ingham. As stated several times this season, most of the Taxi/AHL moves are ‘paper transactions,’ in the sense that teams are required to have a minimum of four players on their taxi squad at all times this season. So expect continued shuffle of guys between AHL/Taxi in the weeks ahead, allowing players to get in games as often as possible.
If you’re looking for some further roster related fun, this was tweeted out last night:
My line suggestions for next game…..
Grundo – Kopitar– Kempe
Carter – Andersson – Kaliyev
Iafallo– Vilardi – Brown
Moore – JAD – FrkAnderson – Doughty
Maatta – Clague
Björnfot – Alt— John Hoven | The Mayor (@mayorNHL) February 3, 2021
While we can confirm prospect Arthur Kaliyev will be in Las Vegas this weekend, it appears far more likely he’ll be playing with the Reign in their AHL season opener on Saturday (vs. the all-new Henderson Silver Knights), rather than suiting up with the Kings for their two-game set vs. the Golden Knights.
Following today’s roughly one-hour practice, McLellan shared the following comments:
On if he uses last night’s loss to Anaheim as a teach moment of throws away the video and tells the team to just look ahead
No, we didn’t erase the video. We spent some time watching it; we dealt with it. We worked today in practice doing some of the things today that we didn’t do last night. Tomorrow will be back to structure and that type of stuff, but we needed to be reminded what it was like to compete and to work. We got that done today.
On what type of things he can do in a practice to work on things like intensity, compete, and competitiveness
Well, the best thing we did was review some of the video. The puck doesn’t care who gets to it first, it’s still gonna lay there. We weren’t too aggressive, as far as getting to loose pucks real quick, we didn’t handle it well once we got there, we weren’t aggressive to defend. Basically, we were a boxer who was just taking punch after punch. That’s not the way our team plays and will play. We’ve got to fix it, so the video session was important. Then, putting them in situations where they had to to do some of the things they didn’t do last night, we did that in practice.
On if they worked on trying to get that first pass down on the breakout
Yep, we certainly did.
On if he’s inclined to have Kaliyev play another NHL game or if it’s better for him to get some AHL games under his belt
That’s a tough thing. He’s a 19-year-old playing his first game and the 19 players around him don’t perform anywhere to their capabilities. It makes it tough on him. Offensively, when he was around the puck, he did the things that he needed to do. I think he’s got a lot of work to do away from the puck and defending. I think it’s come a long way from where it was last year, but he still needs work. You asked me about him specifically, that’s why I’m giving you that answer. But that answer is 20-fold for our group this morning. So let’s keep that in mind. I’m not singling Arty out, at all. As far as moving forward, we’ll have to make some decisions over the next day or two; what’s best for him. It’ll be about him right now, won’t be about our team. It’s more important that he gets what he needs. We’ll make those decisions over the next few days.
On if Martin Frk is trending in the right way, toward being ready to play
He is, yes.
On if there are any tangible categories he can track that deal with competitiveness
We do. For me, it’s very simple, it starts with the face-off. You hear that come out of my mouth a ton of times. It’s that first situation where you have to be a little faster, a little stronger, you have to find a way to cheat a little bit. Then, your teammates have to battle for body position. You have to have a plan and you have to execute it. For me, that’s a real early competitive indicator of whether your team is going to be there or not. Secondly, it’s touches on loose pucks. Who’s getting to them first? If we’re getting to more, then what are we doing off of those touches? Are we protecting pucks? Are we just giving it back to them? If we don’t get their first, how long does it take us to contain it? I think last night you saw some shifts that went on for a minute, minute-and-a-half, in our end. We did a terrible job of of containing anything. Those are some measurable things for us, things that we look at. On a good night, those certainly favor us. On a bad night, like last night, the paper or the stat sheet doesn’t look very good.
On a potential timetable for Sean Walker and the nature of the injury
Obviously, it’s a it’s a head injury. I think that’s pretty obvious. He needs time to recover from that shot to the face. I don’t know what the timeframe will be like. I did see him at the rink yesterday. His face looks much better than it did when we left St. Paul that night. He was actually great spirits. It was uplifting to see him be around the team and be excited to be around the team. All of that points to a good healthy recovery, but he needs a little bit of time.
On if he was aware that MacDermid would be getting into a fight right at the opening faceoff
Let me make it real, real clear to everybody on here. I would never ask a player to do that. I was never asked in my career. I would never ask a player to do that. Dermy is a tough, tough player. When you’re one of the toughest or at the top of the pecking order, people want a shot at you to prove that they belong in those categories. The last two players that he got involved with, it was right at the beginning of the game and they were trying to set the tone for their team. Dermy was doing the same thing for ours. Obviously, Minnesota and Anaheim responded better than the LA Kings did on both those nights.
On how he fills the role of a modern enforcer
He plays 17-18 minutes a night for us. The the old pure-fighter that rode shotgun on the bench never played those minutes. Bob Probert, Joey Kocur, maybe a little bit. They were scoring a lot of goals. But the actual enforcer didn’t do that. Dermy is here for a lot more things than the fighting. He’s a physical player in the corners, he penalty kills well, he blocks shots, breaks plays up, is a great teammate, keeps teammates honest and keeps them safe. I can go on and on. There are times where he may not be making the prettiest play, but I can’t tell you how much he means to our group, over and above the fighting.
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