The Kings blew into the Windy City looking for a pair of broad shoulders to help snap their three-game winless streak against the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday.
It’ll be the Kings’ third game in four nights after they bounced off Wednesday’s overtime loss to Vancouver at home and straight into a couple of lopsided defeats in Dallas on Friday and St. Louis on Saturday, which came by a 10-3 aggregate score. The mini-funk marked just the third time this season that the Kings have lost three or more games consecutively.
“It’s a season where it goes up and down but when it goes down for a couple games, you’ve got to pull yourself out in a hurry,” Coach Jim Hiller told reporters in St. Louis.
Drew Doughty returned to action after missing the Vancouver game with a nebulous lower-body injury, picking up an assist in St. Louis to mitigate his -4 rating over the weekend. With their most experienced defender back in the mix, Brandt Clarke was relegated to being the seventh defensemen one night and a healthy scratch the following evening.
The results were less than desirable at both ends, just as they were when Clarke was scratched during a back-to-back set in Florida in late January. In the three games he has taken in as a spectator, the Kings have gone 0-3-0 and mustered a measly goal while allowing 10.
Hiller has steered nearly every positive development and modicum of praise for Clarke toward a discussion of what he could do better. That stood in stark contrast to the adulation, sometimes entirely unprompted, he’s heaped upon veteran defenseman Joel Edmundson. Last season, waiver loss Andreas Englund played in all 87 games for the Kings in the regular season and playoffs, despite being a career part-time player with obvious limitations along with the “unmeasurables” Hiller lauded.
Clarke was the eighth overall pick in 2021, a draft about which Kings scouting guru Mark Yannetti was effusively enthusiastic about when discussing the team’s overall haul and their selection of Clarke in particular. They had, Yannetti said, two opportunities to move up from No. 8 but opted to stay put and take Clarke, a reflection of how much they valued his combination of skill and confidence.
Yet his game-breaking setup ability and uncommon swagger have not been as well-received of late, despite reciprocally positive results for both team and player with him in the lineup.
For instance, when Clarke registers at least one point, the Kings are 15-4-1, good for a .775 points percentage.
After Clarke played just over five minutes in a win against Utah, Hiller pondered aloud what the ideal amount of ice for him might be.
The Kings have lost eight of nine games in which he played 19 minutes or more, but also all three in which he has been scratched. Removing the outliers on either end, they’ve gone 28-8-7 in games in which Clarke has played between 12:56 and 18:52, giving them a .733 points percentage.
Narrowing that range a bit to between 14:40 and 18:25, their record rises further to 16-1-4, good for an .857 points percentage. That success has even been transferable to the road, where the Kings have struggled, as those 21 games included an 8-1-3 away record, a .791 points percentage. Otherwise on the road, they’re 4-15-2, representing a .239 points percentage.
Despite a reduction in minutes, power-play time and even games played, Clarke still leads the Kings in scoring by a defenseman. He’s tied for fourth on the team, regardless of position, in assists per 60 minutes on a roster that desperately needs both power-play production and overall scoring.
While the Kings may not appear to have a spot for Clarke for whatever reason, Chicago certainly would, in theory, after trading veteran right defenseman Seth Jones to the defending champion Florida Panthers on Saturday.
That same evening, they cooled off the surging Ducks, 6-3, at Honda Center in a game in which Ryan Donato and Teuvo Teräväinen had three points apiece as the ‘Hawks won for the first time in six chances. Leading scorer Connor Bedard will limp into Monday’s match with no points and a -8 rating in his past five outings.