Around New Year's, I posted what I thought the Kings needed to do in order to be "on pace" for the playoffs by the time the Olympic break arrived. I said they needed to get 24 of the 40 possible points. How have they done so far?

A little better than I thought, actually.

I would have guessed they were under .500. In fact, they're slightly better than that. With 12 games to go till the break, they are 4-4-0. That's 8 of the needed 24 points. That leaves 16 points to get, and 12 games to get them. That's 8-4-0 the rest of the way. They're making it hard on themselves, but it's still doable. Especially since, not a moment too soon, they're about to go on the road. 

All the games are important, but the two with DET, two with ANA and the last one, against COL, seem especially so. 

And since so many people seem to think there's an unofficial "soft" trade deadline on Valentine's Day (after which is the Olympic trade freeze), these twelve games are a huge gut-check. 8-4 would be excellent. 6-6 would not be unspeakably hideous, but 4-8 would be hard to recover from, especially since some folks would likely be playing their last games as Kings.