^{The Mammoth look to take points from, and even the season series with, the LA Kings}

In a very late game on Friday, the Mammoth squandered a chance to take 2 points from an Anaheim Ducks team that they outworked and outplayed. Unfortunate ending, but fortunate outcomes elsewhere as Utah’s lead in the wildcard remained at 6 points.

A Mammoth win would have helped cement their WC1 placement, but instead the loss gave the Ducks an important 2 points to help solidify their spot atop the Pacific. Utah effectively helped set a potential first round matchup with the loss.

The WC1 spot is still well within Utah’s grasp. A Nashville Predators win knocked the Los Angeles Kings out of the WC2 spot, inching within 5 points of that coveted WC1 spot.

Tonight, the Kings come to town, looking for a critical 2 points of their own. With the Vegas Golden Knights slipping in their past few games, and a hurting, limping Edmonton Oilers above them poised to collapse, two points tonight puts the Kings within striking distance of both P2 and P3 playoff positions; theoretically just 2 points behind the Knights with the same amount of games played, and 3 points behind Edmonton with a game in hand.

LA will be fighting hard tonight, but this may not feel like a “winner take all” game for them, yet, knowing they have the easiest of easy roads ahead of them.

The Kings aren’t royally screwed in the playoff race, yet. Here’s why:
Fortunately for the Kings, they have the easiest strength of schedule in the NHL moving forward. They play Calgary and Vancouver – the two worst teams in the NHL – 5 times in their last 13 games. The only games the Kings have left against playoff opponents are against the Mammoth today, and again on Saturday the 28th, and the Edmonton Oilers as one of their last few games of the year.

The Anaheim Ducks – who have the second easiest schedule, only facing the Sabres and Wild, along with the same bottom-feeders the Kings play – are likely out of reach to catch, so the best the Kings are hoping for is home ice as P2 winners.

Relying on the “loser points” from overtimes, the Kings have gone 10-16 in bonus hockey. They’re pacing to break the NHL single-season record for overtime losses, 18, and are second only to the Minnesota Wild (27) for total overtime games. For context, the Boston Bruins hold the NHL record for the most overtime games played in a single regular season with 30.

When the Kings aren’t in close games, however, they’re really not in close games. They hold one of the worst goal differentials of any teams making a playoff push (-25). Only 7 teams have worse goal differentials, and 3 of them come from the wretched Pacific division. Only 2 teams in the Pacific have a positive goal differential, the Knights (+2) and Oilers (+1).

So, what do the Kings bring tonight?
The Kings have had some significant changes since the teams last met in December. Trading for, and signing, Artemi Panarin while fleecing the New York Rangers was a masterclass move by Ken Holland. They also made some interesting moves at the trade deadline, being both a buyer and seller. They brought in Scott Laughton and Mathieu Joseph but shipped out Warren Foegele and Corey Perry for picks. Then they got hit by the injury bug, altering their trajectory.

Kevin Fiala, Andrei Kuzmenko, Joel Armia and Quinton Byfield all had injuries that affected the direction of the team. However, Byfield’s injury was short enough lived that he returned shortly after the trade deadline. Armia just returned last game, so that should help the Kings moving forward. Fiala and Kuzmenko are done for the year.

So, the Kings have made do with their trade deadline moves, opting to not sacrifice too much of the future while still trying to get Anze Kopitar, who will be retiring at the end of this year, one last bite at the apple.

The Kings also made a coaching move, firing Jim Hiller on March 1st. Comically, the LA Kings haven’t updated their website, which still features Jim Hiller as head coach (as of March 22nd). D.J. Smith has coached 10 games so far, going .500 in the process (4-4-2). This has been good enough for the Kings to tread water, which has been their MO for most of the year. Prior to the move, the Kings were 8-8-5 in the 2026 calendar year, but had a goal differential of -21 in those 21 games. Yikes. Smith has helped tighten up their games quite a bit, with just a -2 goal differential in 10, as the Kings scoring has improved, while the defense isn’t so glaringly bad.

Drew Doughty and Mikey Anderson have been struggling as a top pairing, making life hard for the Kings. Father time has caught up to Doughty, who is now 36, and is still required to play 20+ minutes a night. In fact, Doughty leads all Kings players by a significant margin. Overworked on the first half of the year, Doughty (at +11 on January 1st) is -14 since. I mentioned expected goals for last blog, where 50% is the average and above is good, below is bad. Doughty sits at 37.3% since January 1st, one of worst goals expected rates in the entire NHL for defensemen, and the worst for a defenseman playing 20+ minutes a night.

Anderson is likewise struggling, having his worst plus/minus rating since his rookie year, and -11 since January 1st. The coaching change has helped that pairing a little bit in the past two weeks, but they’re still massively failing the Kings at the worst times.

Who isn’t failing the Kings right now, though, is Anze Kopitar. Kopitar just recently set the Kings all-time record for points, continuing to add to that stat total (1311). This is his 20th, and last season in the league and with LA. He’s got 2 Cups with his name on them, and this is the last time he’ll have to make it a three-peat. He’s doing all he can to make that happen, too. Since the coaching change, Kopitar has 5 goals, 5 assists in 10 games, and is tied for team lead in goals, and second in points to Artemi Panarin. Kopitar, after 20 seasons in the league, is still playing more than 20 minutes per game, as he’s trying to carry the team with the absence of Fiala and Kuzmenko. That’s just insane.

Panarin joined the team on February 4th, right before the Olympics, and has provided a huge offensive spark to the Kings top line. 5 goals, 11 assists in 13 games puts the Russian at almost 1.25 points per game. Panarin was supposed to complement the team which was meant to include Fiala, but has at least been able to replace Fiala’s production on the top line. What should have been a major upgrade to the team was at least a level of insurance they didn’t expect to cash in on.

The Kings goaltending has been suspect, though, as both Darcy Kuemper and Anton Forsberg have posted terrible numbers since January 1st. However, Kuemper has turned it around under Smith’s tenure. The Kings are giving Kuemper more leeway, scoring 1+ goal per game more than before Smith took charge. More importantly for Kuemper, they’re delivering more shot suppression, too. His workload’s lowered, with the Kings dropping his shots against per game by nearly 2 over his past 6 starts, even with the struggles of their top defensive pairing.

Key points to secure a victory today:
No Rest for the Wicked The LA Kings are at the end of a brutal stretch of games in March. Yesterday, the Kings had a brutal game against the high-flying (can’t believe I’m saying this) Buffalo Sabres. The Sabres won a decisive 4-1 game. With a back to back against the Mammoth, following a rough game, the Mammoth *should* have the edge against LA.

It’s not just this back to back, though. Tonight is the 4th back to back LA has played since the end of February. They just had a 2 game homestand, but had 2 pairs of back to back games, along with a 5th travel day, just a week ago.

The Kings aren’t just looking at being a little tired from a back to back. They’re looking at 8 back to back games in 3 weeks, plus a lot of travel interrupted by 3 days of rest at home. With a fairly old roster – including Kopitar at 38 years old, Doughty as mentioned at 36, Darcy Kuemper at 35, with Brian Dumoulin and Panarin rapidly closing in on that too, the Kings aren’t always going to return to form like they did in their 20s.

This is the ideal situation for the Mammoth to use their speed and fresh legs to exploit the Kings and take control early.

Double Trouble Last game I mentioned some bad play by Sean Durzi in particular. He didn’t necessarily have a bad game. You know who did? The entire defense EXCEPT Durzi (and MacKenzie Weegar).

So, Durzi read the blog and picked things up, but each defenseman plays some time on the PK. John Marino, Ian Cole, Nate Schmidt and Mikhail Sergachev each took a minor. Coupled with some additional forward penalties, Utah spent 12 minutes in the penalty box on Friday. Well, not quite 12 since the last penalty took place with under a minute left. Still, that’s almost a full 20% of the game a man down.

Were some of those penalties suspect? Yep. Were there ones that didn’t get called for us? Yep. Was reffing still a massive problem? Don’t get me started.

Doesn’t matter at the end of the day, though. The team needs to suck it up and realize the refs are biased against this team for some reason. They need to realize that headshots and high sticks to their faces won’t be called. They need to realize that “touching the opponent with your glove on a hockey play that’s a magic high stick turned roughing cause they needed to call something because he was bleeding” will get called against them. The penalty disparity is horrendous, and it’s only going to get worse.

The Kings power play is solid, and they will hurt the Mammoth. Even tired, being able to play a man up is a huge advantage for teams not wearing salt white and mountain blue.

It would reason, then, that a tired Kings team would struggle against a Mammoth power play. At the very least, they won’t likely give up too many short-handed breakaways. Maybe.

Armia’s return yesterday could provide a significant problem for the Mammoth. Armia has 4 shorthanded goals this year, tied for 2nd in the league even after missing more than a dozen games to injury. Play like Sergachev had against the Ducks could make the Mammoth power play a nightmare scenario, so Team Tusk needs to proceed with caution or they might find themselves burned on both special teams units.

Run Support The Mammoth leave poor Vitek Vanecek out to dry. Vanecek just gets no run support – the 1 goal the Mammoth gave him on Friday was the 4th time he gave up 2 goals or less, and the team has 2 shutouts and 2 one-goal games in front of him.

Karel Vejmelka doesn’t seem to have that problem, which is a good thing for him at least. The Mammoth seem to do a lot better with him in net, for some reason, and that needs to happen tonight. The defensively stout Kings team in 2025 has gone by the wayside since January 1st, giving up nearly 3.4 goals a game. While things have tightened up for the Kings slightly, they are still giving up more than 3 goals per game. They’ve given up 3 or more goals in 7 of their last 10 games, winning one of those in regulation, one in OT, and losing the rest in regulation, save for a shootout loss to the Flyers on Thursday.

Vejmelka is capable of stealing games for the Mammoth, and he’s shown he can do so multiple times this year. However, he’s struggled a few games up until the game against the Knights, giving up 4, 5, 3, and 4 goals respectively in the four games prior (1-2-1). The shutout, however, should have been a massive confidence boost for him, stopping all 28 shots against.

The team just needs to do what they don’t do for Vanecek and give Veggie a goal or two cushion to work with. We’ve seen what a successful Vejmelka can do, so it’s up to the Mammoth to let him do it.

Projected Lineup:
It’s 4AM. I’ll update these when more info comes out.

Clayton Keller — Nick Schmaltz — Lawson Crouse
JJ Peterka — Logan Cooley — Dylan Guenther
Jack McBain — Barrett Hayton — Michael Carcone
Alexander Kerfoot — Kevin Stenlund — Kailer Yamamoto

MacKenzie Weegar — Mikhail Sergachev
Nate Schmidt — John Marino
Ian Cole — Sean Durzi

Vitek Vanecek
Karel Vejmelka

Game start 7PM local at the Delta Center, on Utah16, and on SEG+

TUSKS UP!