The Kings are set to begin what will be tied for a season-long six-game road trip. With four of those six games coming in the week ahead, the Kings will travel north of the border for the first three before heading back into the states to conclude the week in Columbus. The first half of the Kings week will pose a set of rematches from earlier in the season in which the Kings hosted the previous meeting.
Beginning with their first game of the week, the Kings will see the 10-13-1 Ottawa Senators for the second time in 10 days. In their first meeting, the Senators beat the Kings 3-2 in overtime behind a Claude Giroux game-winning goal just 20 seconds into overtime. Providing the offense for the Kings against the Senators was Arthur Kaliyev, who tallied two power-play goals in the game. On the season, the Senators are led in scoring by their captain Brady Tkachuk who has 29 points (12-17=29) in 24 games. This will be the second and final meeting between the two clubs.
Two days after their tango with the Senators, the Kings will face off against the 15-5-6 Maple Leafs in Toronto. Having defeated the Maple Leafs 4-2 back on October 29th, the Kings will be going for the two-game season sweep over the blue-blood franchise. With all of the high profile forwards on the Maple Leafs, the one to keep an eye on right now is Mitch Marner. Currently, Marner is riding a franchise-long 19-game point streak. Over those 19 games, Marner has notched 26 points (9-17=26).
The Kings will close out the Canadian portion of the road trip on Saturday in Montreal against the 12-11-1 Canadiens. Playing .500 hockey, the Canadiens are 5-5-0 over their last 10 games, but are a -11 goal differential in those games. Offensively, the Canadiens are led by Nick Suzuki who has 26 points (13-13=26) in 24 games this season. As a team, the Canadiens rank 29th in power play percentage (17.8%) and 11th in both penalty kill percentage (79.8%) and faceoff win percentage (51.8%).
Closing out their week, but not their road trip will be the Kings on Sunday in Columbus versus the Eastern Conference's worst, the 8-13-2 Blue Jackets. This will be the Kings fourth set of back-to-back games this season. So far, the Kings are 1-2-0 on the second half of back-to-back games this season. Onto Columbus, while what the Blue Jackets added in the offseason was huge in Johnny Gaudreau, what they've lost due to injury during the season has been too much to handle. Currently, the Blue Jackets are without assistant captain Zach Werenski, Jakub Voracek, Adam Boqvist, Jake Bean and Justin Danforth and have been without both Patrick Laing and captain Boone Jenner at times this season. This will be the first of two games against the Blue Jackets this season.
Upcoming games this week:
- 12/6 @ Ottawa Senators @4:00
- 12/8 @ Toronto Maple Leafs @4:00
- 12/10 @ Montreal Canadiens @4:00
- 12/11 @ Columbus Blue Jackets @3:00
