Los Angeles Kings v New York Rangers (Staples Center)
Time: 4:00 PM
TV: CBC, RDS, NBC
Enemy reading: Blueshirt Banter
Rangers (projected) lineup:
Kreider-Stepan-Nash
Hagelin-Richards-St. Louis
Pouliot-Brassard-Zuccarello
Boyle-Moore-Dorsett
McDonagh-Girardi
Staal-Stralman
Moore-Klein
Lundqvist
Injured: JT Miller; Scratched: Raphael Diaz, Jesper Fast, Ryan Haggerty, Oscar Lindberg, Justin Falk; Suspended for being an asshole: Dan Carcillo
Kings (projected) lineup:
Gaborik-Kopitar-Brown
Pearson-Carter-Toffoli
King-Stoll-Williams
Clifford-Richards-Lewis
Muzzin-Doughty
Please No-Voynov
Mitchell-Martinez
Quick
Scratched: Matt Greene, Jeff Schultz, Jordan Nolan, Andy Andreoff, Patrik Bartosak, Derek Forbort, Colin Miller, Scott Sabourin, Nick Shore, Jordan Weal, Brayden McNabb, Andrew Bodnarchuk, Linden Vey, Andrew Campbell, Colin Fraser
Game notes:
- Robyn Regehr will “probably” be playing tonight because Darryl Sutter is a monster who wants us to be sad. The Greene-Martinez pairing was a bit of a disaster in game one but had been doing fairly well otherwise, and Willie Mitchell has done a better job of stabilising Slava Voynov, meaning that there is basically no reason to re-insert a rusty Robyn Regehr potentially still dealing with lingering injury issues. Andrew explains more here. I think. It’s difficult to read through these tears.
- John Moore, suspended for concussing Dale Weise, likely returns to the Rangers lineup tonight, displacing Raphael Diaz on the bottom pairing. Despite throwing a gross, late hit to the head, Moore (like every other shithead athlete basically ever) has chosen to go down the ~I’m not that kind of player~ path. Fuck offffff. In terms of hockey impact, Diaz has probably out-performed Moore by a touch, numbers-wise, but I don’t think it makes much of a difference unless Moore “not that kind of players”s his elbow into Jeff Carter’s face.
- After running almost every possible combination of forward lines last game, Darryl Sutter reverted to more familiar lines at morning skate yesterday. I think we can safely assume, however, that he won’t hesitate to mix things up again if the Kings play the kind of garbage hockey they did in the first period of game 1. The Rangers’ (up until then quite effective) system fell into disarray when Sutter moved Carter and Anze Kopitar around – unable to hard-match the stifling fourth line to the Kings’ offensive threats, the Rangers’ top six ended up getting smoked. Lookin’ at you, Derek Stepan.
- Henrik Lundqvist was quite good last game, but even as angry hockey bloggers everywhere hovered with their fingers poised to hit “send” on their meticulously drafted joke tweets about Jonathan not-so-Quick, he pulled out a pretty good game too. Only one Ranger actually scored on him – after the Kings defence totally crapped itself – and he came up solid to send the game into overtime. Some of Quick’s rebounds are still horrifying, but mostly, it’s been so far so good for the Kings in net.
- ~Fun With Numbers~ from Extra Skater.
- Prediction: Still, always, Kings in four.