Carolina Hurricanes @ Los Angeles Kings
Time: 7:30 Pacific
TV: Fox Sports West, Fox Sports Carolinas
Enemy Reading: Canes Country
Los Angeles Kings

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

McNabb-Doughty
Muzzin-Martinez
McBain-Ehrhoff

Quick
(Enroth)

Scratched: Forbort, Weal (?) Injured: Greene, King

Carolina Hurricanes

E. Staal-Rask-Lindholm
Gerbe-J. Staal-McGinn
Skinner-Nestrasil-Versteeg
Malone-McClement-Terry

Hainsey-Faulk
Liles-Jordan
Hanifin-Murphy

Ward
(Lack)

Injured: Wisniewski, Nash, Nordstrom

Notes:

• Hi folks, welcome to your second straight day of dealing with JFTC’s resident queer ghost for your game day previews. I’m sorry. I’ll try to keep this one a lot shorter than yesterday’s, because it’s just the friggin’ Hurricanes and I doubt anyone cares.
• So last night went pretty well for the Kings huh? There aren’t a lot of lineup changes projected heading into tonight’s game; in his morning skate post, Jon Rosen speculated that perhaps we could see Jordan Weal come in for Andy Andreoff (please god) because Weal barely stayed on the ice for extra work, but it was also an optional skate so who knows. Maybe Weal just really wanted to play some Sega Saturn. Maybe he’s really into Clockwork Knight. We don’t know.
• I should note I got my Hurricane lines from the same Rosen post, and he in turn appeared to get them from a Carolina beat writer, so if they’re wrong go yell at some guy from Carolina I guess. I say this only because I noticed the Canes Country blog has vastly different lines listed in their preview. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
• The big mystery from last night, Why The Hell Was Jamie McBain In The Lineup, was solved after Darryl Sutter revealed that Derek Forbort currently has some kind of undisclosed illness. It doesn’t look like the ‘bort man will be ready to go tonight either, so are you ready for more Jamie McBain everybody??? Yeah!
• So the Kings’ opponents for tonight are one of those teams that’s better than you think they are. Last year they were the worst team in the Metro with a 30-41-11 record, but were in a three-way tie for the 7th best even-strength Corsi in the league (52.6%). This year they’re off to an uninspiring 2-4-0 start, but their even strength Corsi is….52.6% (how creepy). Yes, puck possession isn’t everything and blah blah, but bottom line is this team is not a pushover by any stretch.
• What isn’t helping Carolina convert their positive puck possession into wins is their goaltending. Cam Ward, who is basically Jonathan Quick without the glowing press, is not very good and hasn’t been for a long time. His .900 ev sv% in 5 games certainly isn’t getting the job done (that’s exactly what Quick’s is in 5 games as well, by the way!) but, rather inexplicably, he continues to get all the starts in goal so far. This is despite the fact that Carolina brought in Eddie Lack in the offseason, who everyone presumed was there to steal the starting job from the pending UFA Ward. He’s gotten one start so far, and doesn’t look to be starting tonight either. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
• PREDICTION:
  

  ¯_(ツ)_/¯

• no really I have no idea. It’s the second night of a back-to-back. Both goalies kind of suck. The Kings are clearly better than the Hurricanes, but who the hell knows what’s gonna happen tonight! In the meantime, go Blue Jays.