Power players
Awful goaltending leads to awful penalty killing, so the Kings had that going against them last season. In general though, there's been a big push in training camp to improve the penalty kill, which was the worst in the league last season at 77.9 percent. Right now, the Kings are holding a special-teams scrimmage, in which they're taking time to specifically look at how players respond in PK and PP situations.
``We want to see which guys can help us in that regard and which guys have those instincts,'' coach Marc Crawford said. ``It's about how they move and think and handle the puck and make plays in tight quarters.''
Players such as Michal Handzus, Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar have already proven their penalty-killing skills to Crawford, who pointed out players such as Nagy, O'Sullivan, Thornton, Giuliano, Cliche, Lewis, Murray, Klemm and Zeiler as players he wanted to get a look at in today's workout.
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J.P. Hoornstra writes about NHL and IHL hockey for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. He welcomes any and all dialogue on the finer points of hockey.
E-mail J.P. at jp.hoornstra@inlandnewspapers.com.
Jill Painter joined the Daily News in 2000 and during the last eight years she's covered the Dodgers, Cal State Northridge, UCLA, Kings, golf and everything in between. Even though she's from Colorado, she still freezes in the Staples Center press box but always manages to thaw her fingers in time to make deadline. E-mail Jill at jill.painter@dailynews
.com.
Vincent Bonsignore is a sports columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News. E-mail Vinny at vincent.bonsignore
@dailynews.com.
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It also helps to have players on the PK who will lay their body on the line to impede the puck from progressing towards the net. They also have to be stronger in the faceoff circle.
In the 2000-2001 season, the Kings had the six worst PK unit in the league.
By next season, they had the third best PK unit in the NHL.
Goaltending (provided by Felix Potvin at that time) also played a big role just as it always will when a team is playing shorthanded.
Is Frolov not being considered at all? I am pretty sure most agree defense is one of his better attributes.
Sounds like one of Cliche, Lewis, Gulliano, or Murray is going to fill that last forward roster spot.