Saturday afternoon’s preseason Freeway Faceoff will take the Kings and Ducks off the 5 Freeway and onto the 10 Freeway as they’ll clash in Ontario on the Reign’s home ice at Toyota Arena.
Though the Kings will technically be the visitors, it’ll be the closest they come to a home game until their delayed Crypto.com Arena opener Oct. 24 as a result of renovations being completed on the building.
On Friday, the Kings gave a glimpse of their power-play units, without the injured Drew Doughty – he is now officially out month-to-month as he prepares to undergo surgery to repair his broken left ankle – and with Brandt Clarke running the first unit. Notably, second-year winger Alex Laferriere joined him there, while Quinton Byfield was on the second unit with newcomer and offseason training buddy Warren Foegele.
Kings coach Jim Hiller described Doughty as “one of the true leaders on the team” and said the overt frustration of several veteran players when Doughty was injured early in Wednesday’s win over Vegas demonstrated the esteem they had for him and his varied contributions.
“He’s just the ultimate hockey player, Drew, when you think about hockey, you think about Drew Doughty,” Hiller said on Friday’s “32 Thoughts” podcast. “He’s competitive, he’s passionate about the sport and he loves his teammates.”
The Ducks will also be without one of their mainstays, goalie John Gibson, whose recent appendectomy will keep him off the ice for the next three to six weeks. Ducks coach Greg Cronin said his goalie staff was in the process of evaluating potential options to back up Lukáš Dostál, but that the primary adjustment would be a heavier workload for Dostál himself.
Beyond the net, Cronin said that he would be gradually moving his top-level players into the lineup, something that began in Thursday’s 3-2 overtime loss to San Jose, and settle into an alignment similar to opening night for Games 5 and 6 of the preseason. That’ll mean players like Frank Vatrano and Ryan Strome likely drawing into the lineup Saturday, when trade acquisition Robby Fabbri is expected to make his Ducks debut as well.
“Now, it’s more about timing and chemistry with lines,” Cronin said. “We’ll try and manage that and see what combinations will work.”
One blend that has proved smooth early, though it likely won’t be on the ice Saturday, has been the meshing of Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier and Alex Killorn. They were effective at even strength against San Jose, while Carlsson skated with Gauthier on the top power-play unit and with Killorn while shorthanded.
Cronin said he wanted not only Carlsson but also Troy Terry and Mason McTavish on the penalty kill in order to avoid disruptions of their ice time, and also because “there’s a cerebral part of penalty killers who also play the power play” that can diversify and potentiate the PK.
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Carlsson said he and Gauthier had a natural vibe, with Carlsson in the role of playmaker and the trigger-happy Gauthier firing the puck copiously. For his part, Cronin said that he’d like to see Carlsson, who scored a power-play goal Thursday, become a more willing shooter to balance out and open up his line’s attacks.
“You can tell that they read off each other really well. They’re both really good skaters, they’ve got high IQ and they can shoot the puck,” Cronin said. “I think if we can get Leo into that mindset of ‘shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot,’ those passing lanes will open up, because he is a scoring threat.”