Canucks Army GDT #14 – Canucks @ Kings

After escaping Northern California with a stolen two points, Vancouver is back in action tonight looking to avoid a moral victory against the L.A. Kings. The Canucks enter L.A. with a 10-4-0 record, and just two points back of the Anaheim Ducks for 1st place in the entire NHL. A win over the always tough Kings tonight will set up a first-place showdown with the Ducks tomorrow, so Vancouver should be motivated to come out and put forth a better effort than Thursday night in San Jose.

Read past the jump for a preview of tonight’s action.

Puck Drop: 7:00 PM PST

TV: CBC

Radio: TSN 1040

For a team that’s been the model for puck possession hockey since Darryl Sutter took over as head coach, the Los Angeles Kings have been strangely mediocre this season. Their top-end possession players like Kopitar, Doughty, Muzzin, and Williams are still top-end possession players, but the Kings themselves rank 18th in the NHL in raw Corsi (50.6%) and 19th in score-adjusted Fenwick (49.1%). The reason for this looks to be two-fold: one, the bottom end of their roster isn’t performing like an elite puck possession group so far this season, and two, this group is getting proportionately more ice time than they have in the past.

As Corey Pronman points out, Jarret Stoll is playing more than any other Kings C on a per game basis so far, and he’s been terrible. Giving Anze Kopitar some of his ES ice time back should in itself improve the Kings 5-on-5 play on the whole, but it won’t fix whatever’s ailing Stoll and the rest of the lower end of L.A.’s roster.

Offensively, the Kings are riding the Pearson-Carter-Toffoli line (if you see anyone on Twitter referring to them as “That 70’s Line,” block that person and report them for spam), but much of their early success is a bit of a mirage. Toffoli and Carter have on-ice shooting percentages well over 12%, and Pearson is at 11.76% himself. All three also have PDO’s around 1100, so their goal differential is due to come crashing back down towards 50% and away from the 90% rate they’ve been seeing early on. Long in short, when Doug MacLean or P.J. Stock inevitably try to make the argument that they’re the best line in hockey tonight, they’re wrong.

On the Canucks side of things, both Brad Richardson and Zack Kassian will likely miss tonight’s game, meaning Bo Horvat and Nicklas Jensen will take their places on the third line. Horvat will play his 3rd game of the year out of the 9 he’s allowed before a year of his contract is burnt, and Jensen will make his season debut. Jensen is tied for 4th on the 1st place Comets in scoring this season with 6 points in 11 games, and tied for the team lead in goals and shots with Brandon DeFazio, at 4 and 31 respectively. His counting stats aren’t great, but he should be able to keep his head above water in the NHL.

It will be interesting to see how much ice time the Matthias-Horvat-Jensen trio is afforded under Willie Desjardins, especially since Desjardins has been hesitant to give Bo Horvat a lot of time in his two games with Vancouver so far. One would think that even though they’re listed as the third line, the Dorsett-Vey-Hansen group will see the ice more than them tonight, but another wrench may be thrown into things if Radim Vrbata is in fact injured and can’t go tonight either.

If this is the case, I’d expect Burrows to slide up to line 1, while either Jannik Hansen or Linden Vey take Burrows’ place on line 2 with Yannick Weber drawing into the lineup as a 4th line winger, as he did at times last season.