Mikey Anderson's injury only magnifies Kings' poor decision to scratch Brandt Clarke
The Kings once again made the surprising move of having Brandt Clarke be a healthy scratch, his second consecutive game that he was inactive. The coaching staff decided to go into this game with only six defensemen, even though most of the season they have had seven, and this group was stretched very thin for most of the game.
This was due to Mikey Anderson suffering a hand injury in the first period and not returning for the remainder of the game leaving them with only five defensemen.
Jim Hiller needs to decide if the Kings are going to stick with six defensemen for the foreseeable future or get back to using seven. The roster right now has nine defensemen total and the Kings sent Samuel Helenius back down to the AHL to create room for Drew Doughty.
If they are going to stick with six active for games, then they need to bring a forward up and cut the defensemen down to eight as it doesn't make sense to have three defensemen inactive every game.