Preview, Game Day #13: Columbus Blue Jackets @ Los Angeles Kings

Columbus Blue Jackets @ Los Angeles Kings

Time: 7:30 Pacific

TV: Fox Sports West, Fox Sports Ohio

Enemy Reading: The Cannon

Los Angeles Kings

Gaborik-Kopitar-Brown
Lucic-Carter-Toffoli
Pearson-Shore-Lewis
Clifford-Andreoff-Nolan

McNabb-Doughty
Muzzin-Martinez
Ehrhoff-McBain

Quick
(Enroth)

Scratched: Forbort, Weal Injured: Greene, King

Columbus Blue Jackets

Saad-Dubinsky-Jenner
Calvert-Johansen-Atkinson
Hartnell-Karlsson-Foligno
Campbell-Wennberg-Boll

Savard-Johnson
Tyutin-Murray
Connauton-Prout

Bobrovsky
(McElhinney)

Injured: Clarkson Scratched: Rychel, Goloubef, Borque

Stats & Such
(Small sample size warning. Fancy stats courtesy War on Ice)

Notes:

• So tonight the Kings return home for their third game in four nights. Considering I'm exhausted with just writing these damn previews three times in four days, I can only imagine how tired the players must be. Then again, their fingers are probably in better shape!
• Their opponent in tonight's game is of course the Columbus Blue Jackets, they of the eight straight regulation losses to start the season. Since starting off the year like that they're 3-2-0, which would be fine except they started off 0-8-0. That kind of pace just isn't going to get it done for the Jackets anymore (unless they played in the Pacific; then it might).
• The Jackets are coming off a win over the San Jose Sharks, which was cool and funny. Bobrovsky stood on his head to get the Jackets the win, stopping 41 of 43 shots; as you can see by his save percentage on the year, that isn't exactly something he's done a lot of this season. Of course his save percentage was never likely to stay in the sub-900 range all year long, and the Kings don't exactly shoot anyone's lights out, so I guess what I'm saying here is prepare yourself for the possibility of a shutout tonight.
• Meanwhile, the Kings salvaged a victory over the Blues in St. Louis a day after blowing a third-period lead and losing in regulation in Chicago, so all things considered things worked out okay.....except for that whole "Anze Kopitar left the game" thing. But everything turned out to be sunshine and joy as opposed to the firey explosion of the sun and wailing, as Kopitar confirmed he'll play in tonight's game. If you want to imagine a terrifying Kopitar-less world anyway, hypothetical person who does not exist, Nick has you covered.
• We're four bullets in and I'm already out of steam. Today has not been a good day when it comes to hockey and (especially) online discussions of it, for reasons I'm not going to go over here (but should be rather obvious), and I think I want to wrap this up. Besides, it's only the Blue Jackets, who really gives a crap.
• Alas, I won't let you down. I know why you really clicked on this link. It's because you want to know the answer to which Mega Man villain are you, opponent? I've got you covered. The Blue Jackets are obviously:

  

  Dust Man !!! Look, this one was really easy. He's a friggin' sentient dustbuster, which is super lame just like the Blue Jackets. His entire purpose for existence is sucking up trash, which the Jackets have done nicely for the Kings over the years by trading for Jack Johnson and hiring John Tortorella as head coach before Dean Lombardi could. Hell, even the game he's in is lame- he's from December 1991's Mega Man 4 (January '92 in the US), widely pointed to as the beginning of the main series' decline in quality, for a number of reasons (not the least of which being that all of Capcom's best programmers had moved on to SNES work, as the system had launched in both Japan & the US already, and yet the Mega Man series continued on for two more NES entries after this one!). Mega Man 4 introduced the New Mega Buster whose charged-up shots basically broke the series, and it introduced the concept of a TOTALLY NEW VILLAIN!!! who....turns out to just be a front for Dr. Wily anyway (they liked that one so much they would do it over and over again, in the main series and X too with Sigma instead of Wily). Neither of these are good additions. Although this game's fake villain, the Soviet ballet enthusiast Dr. Cossack, is at least kind of cool. By the way, Dust Man has a pollen allergy. Just wanted to let you know that.
• PREDICTION: The Kings lose 1-0 in a shootout in a game so boring the entire world falls asleep, allowing pollen-allergic robots an easy route to our conquest.