After about a two week break for the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, the Los Angeles Kings are returning to the ice on Saturday against the Utah Hockey Club. Prior to the break, they had some great momentum as they secured seven out of a possible eight points with wins over the Carolina Hurricanes, Montreal Canadiens, and Dallas Stars before losing in a shoot-out to the Anaheim Ducks.
The Kings currently sit in third place in the Pacific Division but with most of the remaining games at home, they have a good chance to close the gap with the Edmonton Oilers and Vegas Golden Knights. Another factor that should benefit them is that for the first time almost all season, they are fully healthy.
For most of the season, the Los Angeles Kings were without defenseman Drew Doughty after he suffered an ankle injury during the preseason. He would return at the end of January and make his season debut against the Florida Panthers.
At that point, the Kings had their full roster but it lasted only a game and a half as Mikey Anderson suffered an injury to his finger in the next game and would miss the remainder of the games before the break. On Friday, Eric Stephens of The Athletic tweeted that the Kings are expecting Anderson to return along with Drew Doughty and Adrian Kempe being available.
Kings expect Drew Doughty and Adrian Kempe, their 4 Nations participants, to be in the lineup tomorrow against Utah. Mikey Anderson will return as well after missing a few games due to finger issue.
— Eric Stephens (@icemancometh) February 21, 2025
Los Angeles Kings have some roster decisions to make before the game
While it is great that the Kings are going to have everyone available, Jim Hiller will have some decisions he needs to make before this game. In January when Doughty returns, the Kings elected to make Brandt Clarke a healthy scratch and go with a roster alignment of 12 forwards and six defensemen.
However, most of the season they have gone with 11 forwards and seven defensemen. I would suspect that they return to that as a way to make sure Clarke is available and can play. It is hard to imagine him being a healthy scratch the rest of the way if everyone is healthy.
It is also will be interesting to see what the pairings are on defense moving forward. Last season, Doughty played most of the year with Mikey Anderson but Anderson has played really well next to Vladislav Gavrikov.
On Friday, Russell Morgan of Hockey Royalty tweeted that Anderson and Gavrikov are going to be paired moving forward. This sets up Doughty to more than likely be paired with Joel Edmundson. If that is the case then Jacob Moverare will probably have a rotation of Jordan Spence and Brandt Clarke, which will significantly cut back on the ice time of both players.
The Los Angeles Kings should be excited to have the roster the healthiest it has been all season but certainly creates some challenges for head coach Jim Hiller.