Regicide (Take Two): Canucks & Kings

 

> Can either team score?: Raise your hand if you thought Ryan Kesler, Mason Raymond, Henrik Sedin, Mikael Samuelsson, Alex Edler or Kevin Bieksa would be without a goal three games into the season? Hell Kes, MayRay and Juice don’t even have points. The Kings have some flameouts on their own: Kopitar and Doughty haven’t scored and Ponikarovsky, Johnson and Simmonds have no points. Check the numbers above: this game could come down to special teams. Speaking of which…

> Discipline: Vancouver has graciously given three 5-on-3’s in three games (one to the Kings opening night). Some of that is poor decisions (Bieksa’s slash), some are phantom calls (Kesler’s puck deflection that was off a Duck stick). Regardless, one of their major weaknesses from last season was the PK, a point the Kings drove home quite well in the first round of the playoffs. Despite the best efforts from Malhotra and Hamhuis, it’s still not good enough and you can’t hang two man advantage goals on Luongo either. Composure is rarely Vancouver’s strength but they’ll need to start embracing it if their kill is going to hang around the bottom third of the league.

> Solid ‘tween the pipes: Luongo and Quick both entered the playoffs on horrible skids. Now they represent some of the best goalies in the league, both being in the top 10 of SV% and GAA of the short season. The game shouldn’t be high scoring, so expect another long night for the netminders. One slip up or miscue could be the game.