1/24 Preview – The Opportunity Ahead + Optional Skate Today, Penalty Kill Adjustments, Hiller on Doughty, Moore/Kopitar

TODAY’S MATCHUP: The Kings begin a season-long, six-game roadtrip this evening as they visit the St. Louis Blues, before a string of five games against Eastern Conference opposition.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: Forward Adrian Kempe was the difference maker when these teams played in St. Louis back in October, as he scored the game-winning goal in overtime as a part of a multi-point game in a 2-1 victory over the Blues. Since the start of the 2022-23 season, only five players around the league have scored more goals against St. Louis than Kempe, who has buried seven in that span.

KINGS VITALS: The Kings held an optional morning skate today, in advance of tonight’s game against the Blues.

Unsure as of this morning regarding the starting goaltender for tonight’s game. Should goaltender Darcy Kuemper be back between the pipes this evening against the Blues, he made 17 saves on 18 shots in a 2-1 win in St. Louis earlier this season and he brings with him a lifetime record of 11-6-1 versus the Blues, with a .916 save percentage and a 2.33 goals-against average. Should the Kings go to Anton Forsberg, he has played four career games against St. Louis with a .885 save percentage and a 2.88 goals-against average.

Based on Thursday’s practice, here is a projected lineup for the Kings in tonight’s game –

Kempe – Laferriere – Perry
Foegele – Byfield – Armia
Fiala – Turcotte – Kuzmenko
Malott – Helenius – Ward

Anderson – Doughty
Edmundson – Clarke
Dumoulin – Ceci

Kuemper / Forsberg

The only change above from Tuesday’s lineup would be the return of defenseman Drew Doughty, who missed out on the Rangers game due to illness. Doughty replaces defenseman Jacob Moverare. Forwards Anze Kopitar and Trevor Moore are on the trip but remain on injured reserve and would need to be activated in order to play, so until that happens, would expect the same players up front.

BLUES VITALS: St. Louis returns home this evening after playing in Dallas yesterday, a 3-2 defeat, which extended a two-game losing skid to three games.

Per Jeremy Rutherford of The Athletic, here’s how the Blues lined up last time out –

#stlblues projected lineup at Dallas tonight:

Berggren-Schenn-Snuggerud
Neighbours-Buchnevich-Kyrou
Stenberg-Dvorsky-Joseph
Toropchenko-Bjugstad-Fabbri

Broberg-Parayko
Tucker-Faulk
Fowler-Mailloux

Binnngton

— Jeremy Rutherford (@jprutherford) January 24, 2026

St. Louis forward Robert Thomas, the team’s leading scorer, was placed on injured reserve last week and will miss tonight’s game with a lower-body injury. St. Louis is also without forwards Pius Suter and Mathieu Joseph due to injury. Defenseman Justin Faulk scored the only Blues goal when these teams met back in October and his 11 goals this season are tied for sixth in the NHL among blueliners.

Storyline Of The Day – The Opportunity Ahead
Tonight’s game, as I wrote about yesterday, begins what could be a defining roadtrip for the Los Angeles Kings.

Defining can mean a number of things. How will this team be defined when all is said and done? Won’t be solely about what the team does over these six games, but there’s certainly no time like the present to start.

“How many are left, 30 some-odd games, and they’re all going to be big,” goaltender Darcy Kuemper said of the trip to come. “Especially, we want to put ourselves in a good spot coming out of the break. We’ve got eight games left, six on this trip, and we want to be in as good a spot as we can be coming out of it.”

The Kings can’t win six games tonight. But they did win on Tuesday and they can win another one tonight. They can start the trip on a very strong note with a in against the Blues. That’s the plan, at least.

“It is a very important chunk of games,” defenseman Cody Ceci added. “We’ve just got to take it one at a time, go and see what happens and adjust along the way. I think it’ll be good for the group just to get away from home and really focus on these games leading into the break.”

Tonight’s game feels like a table setter of sorts. A choose your own adventure moment for this group.

The Kings have already put together two very good trips this season. They went 4-0-1 on their first longer swing in October and followed that up with a 4-1-0 trip on the East Coast back in November. Without those trips, we’d be posting Gavin McKenna scouting reports. It’s where the Kings have done the bulk of their damage this season, tied for the Pacific Division lead with 12 wins and a .625 points percentage away from home. That’s compared to the play at home, where the team has just eight wins this season, the third-fewest in the NHL.

So the Kings are out on the road. They know what’s left on the schedule and they know where they sit in the standings. Everyone knows where things are at and everyone knows what’s at stake.

What’s to be done about it?

Go win a game. One thing to talk about doing it and another to go out there and actually do it.

That’s where we’re at right now. Go win a game, rest up, recover and go do it again. I think that we’re beyond the point in the season where one win changes a ton. Tuesday’s victory over the Rangers was a relieving feeling, more than a joyful one. That stopped the skid a bit. Now the Kings have to stack wins. Tonight presents a good opportunity to do so, but it’s an opportunity we’ve seen before. St. Louis is without their best player, they played last night in Dallas and traveled home, arriving late. The Kings, meanwhile, haven’t played since Tuesday. We’ve seen these opportunities before and the Kings have not taken advantage. Over the last 15 games alone, it’s been Columbus without Werenski, Seattle without Dunn, Tampa Bay without Hedman, Anaheim without Carlsson & Terry. Five losses, with two against the Ducks.

Now it’s St. Louis without Thomas. How will the Kings answer that opportunity at the start of a long trip? Find out soon enough.

3 To Watch For –
– The biggest moment in Tuesday’s win over New York was the 5-on-3 penalty kill.

Anton Forsberg’s goaltending was a huge reason why. But give Mikey Anderson and Cody Ceci some credit as well. Both players delivered in that moment to survive. Really all you can do 3-on-5.

The penalty kill has been a battle all season long. It was really bad in October. It was outstanding in November. Fell off again in December and hasn’t really swung back in January. That’s a net negative overall. The Kings are working on a few things to change it up and they’ve now gone three straight without conceding a power-play goal.

“I think when you start going on your heels a little bit and goals start going in, it goes a long way, so confidence is a big part of it,” Ceci said. “Being on your toes, jumping on pucks and being in their face, instead of trying to sit back and read. I think we’ve tried to reset mentally and get back on our toes.”

Ceci said that the Kings changed the defensive pairings on the kill to try and make some adjustments. When everyone is healthy, recently, Ceci has gone with Joel Edmundson, while Anderson has been with Drew Doughty, after Anderson/Edmundson was a staple for the bulk of the season. Think we’ll see the former tonight, with Doughty back in.

– On Doughty, now that he’s back from illness, Hiller was asked yesterday if he envisions any change to Doughty’s role. Of late, the Anderson/Doughty pairing has been on the ice for goals against at a higher rate than they have been for the better part of five seasons.

Hiller was firm in stressing what he believes is Doughty’s importance to the team and he doesn’t see any changes coming on that front right now. Combining two of his answers here, but here’s what he had to say –

“He’s an important player and he’ll continue to be. Like all players, they go up and down. What is the basis of the evaluation? The easy ones are plus/minus, points, those are the easiest basis for evaluation and then wins. So, when you look at those three, you go oh, okay, but there’s stuff that’s happening underneath that, for different reasons, that is still part of the bigger evaluation……I’m talking about reviewing the game, reviewing situations, based on time and space constraints, seeing the decisions, seeing the execution. Looking at some of those details just a little bit closer than what is captured in goals, assists, plus/minus and ultimately wins for each individual player.”

I had asked Hiller before Doughty missed the game due to illness if he was considering switching the pairs up a bit, even temporarily, just to get those guys going. He said it was being considered, but they weren’t there yet. Wouldn’t expect any changes for tonight and the Kings will allow their top guys to work through it.

– For your regularly scheduled injury updates, forwards Anze Kopitar and Trevor Moore are both on the trip.

Moore certainly feels the closer of the two, having practiced in full on Thursday as well. He hasn’t missed a day on the ice with his injury, but his workload hadn’t really been ramped up, at least until this week. Seems like that’s changing now, which is a good sign.

For Kopitar, he has skated on his own but again, he hasn’t really ramped it up yet. At home, the Kings have injury ice available but that’s not always the case on the road. So, perhaps that could get the captain in and around the team a bit more on the ice this week with the team on the road and having less ice available.

TLDR, as of right now, both are here on the road and skating, but but players first need to be activated.

Six-game trip gets underway here tonight against the Blues. If I haven’t said it enough, feels like it could be a defining trip in one of several ways for the Kings. All starts in St. Louis this evening!