Game 49: Building on Hank’s strong play

AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill

The Rangers are back home tonight to take on the LA Kings after winning games in Toronto and Detroit. The wins are nice, albeit somewhat flawed, but the key thing is that Henrik Lundqvist was strong. After a season of ups and downs, Hank was focused and making key saves in both games. That’s something the Rangers will desperately need going forward.

But in come the formidable Kings tonight. Despite the record, they are always a difficult team to play against. The Kings are decent on defense, but they just haven’t been scoring that much. They have very little scoring depth, which plays into the Rangers’ strengths. They are a team that will try to grind the opposition into exhaustion, but the overall team speed for the Rangers will make it tough for LA to do that.

Kings Systems

Daryl Sutter has the Kings playing a system similar to that of John Tortorella’s Rangers. They generally run an aggressive overload 2-1-2 forecheck (forecheckers attack the same side of the ice) and they play a 2-1-2 zone defense off the wall (two guys take the hit zone, one takes the support zone, two have the slot). Once the puck moves up high, depending on the matchup, they’ll attack the blue line or collapse their forwards.  They play a hybrid penalty kill, and a 1-3-1/modified umbrella on the powerplay.

Kings Lines

Dwight King-Anze Kopitar-Marian Gaborik
Tanner Pearson-Jeff Carter-Dustin Brown
Andy Andreoff-Nic Down-Trevor Lewis
Kyle Clifford-Nick Shore-Jordan Nolan

Jake Muzzin-Drew Doughty
Derek Forbort-Alec Martinez
Kevin Gravel-Tom Gilbert

PP1: Carter-Kopitar-Pearson-Doughty-Muzzin
PP2: Brown-Dowd-Gaborik-Forbort-Martinez

Peter Budaj gets the start.

Rangers Lines 

Rick Nash–Mika Zibanejad–Pavel Buchnevich
Chris Kreider–Derek Stepan–Mats Zuccarello
Michael Grabner–JT Miller-Jimmy Vesey
Matt Puempel-Oscar Lindberg–Brandon Pirri

Ryan McDonagh–Dan Girardi
Nick Holden–Kevin Klein
Brady Skjei–Adam Clendening

PP1: Zibanejad-Buchnevich-Nash-Miller-Clendening
PP2: Stepan-Pirri-Kreider-Zuccarello-McDonagh

Henrik Lundqvist gets the start.

Injuries/Scratches: Marc Staal (upper body), Kevin Hayes (lower body), Jesper Fast (lower body), Antti Raanta (lower body)

Crazy Prediction: Back to back shutouts and the return of The King.

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