| Los Angeles Kings of Anaheim | Team | Detroit Red Wings |
| 28-18-12 68 points | Record | 33-14-11 76 points |
| Jonathan Quick (24-15-10 2.43 GAA) | Starting Goaltender | Jonas Gustavsson (2-1-1 2.18 GAA) |
| Jewels From the Crown Battle of California |
SB Nation Blog / Last meeting | Oct 31st (5-2 W) |
| 10:30 PM EST | Time – Television | FSD, FSW, SN |
Los Angeles doesn’t give a shit about the regular season except in that they have a requirement to make the playoffs. To that end, they waited until kind of late in the season to start making a serious push to get there. Unfortunately, we didn’t get both games out of the way before that happened because I rather enjoyed the 5-2 Halloween night victory that featured two-goal performances by both Pavel Datsyuk and Gustav Nyquist.
LA has won 7 in a row and currently occupy the third place spot in the Pacific Division. They’re actually a point below Wild Card #2 Minnesota, but c’est la vie. Playoff seeding is always unfair to the loser teams. If the playoffs started today, the Kings’ path to the conference finals would go through Vancouver and then through the winner of an Anaheim/Winnipeg series (which is like a market path to the Cup semifinal as far as the west is laid out).
Things are still tight for the Kings though, as both Calgary and San Jose are breathing down their necks. Detroit could do the West a little favor by beating them tonight.
Have fun in the comments and let’s go Red Wings.
