Game Preview – Kings vs Predators

So it’s time for the Preds again. We only met with them last week when they beat the Kings 2-1 at their home. But fear not! It is time for a rah-rah edition of Game Preview today. The series is tied 1-1 and this is the 3rd of our 4 meetings this season. The Kings need to bring the shooting tonight as Nashville has been crazy winning lately. Penne especially is on a hot streak. He is 15-2-3 since Jan 7, and has started all of the last 11 home games which have been 9-0-2. Rinne will be in-goal tonight as well. But the Predators also have had a few changes due to trades and are out of sorts. I read a great stat on the Predators that they are 28th on defense on 5 v 5. Tonight they will still be without top D, Kevin Klein. All the more help for us.

But don’t count the Kings out quite yet. Brown is on his own hot streak with six goals and four assists in his last six games. Jeff Carter scored two against the Ducks and I really believe we will be seeing a whole different team out there tonight. No one could understand why the Kings weren’t scoring – the answer is that there is no answer. They were down and it was a collective depression I believe. Once the goals started coming and the rookies started it for us, the whole team started to take a little breath. Then we had rumor trades, Sutter’s threats and Carter breaking out to score. Ladies! We are on a rock and roll highway. We are going to make our way up that road to the playoffs. Don’t worry about the tough teams coming up, the Kings are notorious for playing a winning game against top teams. This is it fans. The time is now…I’m pretty hopeful on that.

A Few Notes:

• Kings have 45.2% chance of making the playoffs.
• Kings are in 9th place, 1 point behind 8th place San Jose.
• We start a 4 game road trip tonight.
• The Kings moved ahead of Minnesota and into 29th in the NHL in goals per game.
• L.A. has scored 13 goals while winning three times since Carter’s arrival.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quick is in goal tonight and the lines look the same with Drewski, Richardson and Westgarth out. I’ll leave the linup the same until there are changes.

Kings Lineup

# 23 Brown– # 11 Kopitar –  # 14 Williams

# 74 King– # 10 Richards – # 77 Carter

# 25 Penner –  # 28 Stoll – # 22 Lewis

# 13 Clifford– # 24 Fraser – # 71 Nolan

# 7 Scuderi – # 8 Doughty

# 33 Mitchell – # 26 Voynov

# 27 Martinez –# 22 Greene

# 32 Quick

# 45 Bernier

Nashville Predators

#74 Sergei Kostitsyn – #12 Mike Fisher – #10 Martin Erat
#46 Andrei Kostitsyn – #11 David Legwand – #27 Patric Hornqvist
#33 Colin Wilson – #13 Nick Spaling – #22 Jordin Tootoo
#18 Brandon Yip – #28 Paul Gaustad – #57 Gabriel Bourque

#20 Ryan Suter – #6 Shea Weber
#75 Hal Gill – #59 Roman Josi
#51 Francis Bouillon – #38 Jack Hillen

#35 Pekka Rinne
#39 Anders Lindback

Kings Win tonight! Go Kings Go!