Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (2-2-0, 4 points, 4th place Metropolitan Division) @ Los Angeles Kings (1-2-1, 3 points, 5th place Pacific Division)

How to Watch: Locally broadcast on Sportsnet Pittsburgh and Fanduel Sports Network, streaming on ESPN+

Pens’ Path Ahead: This seems like the first time in forever the Pens go out west to either California or the upper Canadian swing and don’t have to play a back-to-back while on the trip. Pittsburgh finishes their Cali journey up in San Jose on Saturday night, before heading home to play Vancouver at PPG Paints on Tuesday. Then the Pens are right back to a warm venue a week from tonight down in Sunrise, Florida to play the Panthers. Kinda a bummer for them that they’re using up all these warm weather locales before winter has even got a chance to hit.

Opponent Track: Challenging start for the Kings, they opened up at home losing 4-1 to Colorado last Tuesday and them embarked on a 1-1-1 road trip with stops in Vegas (shootout win), Winnipeg (3-2 regulation loss) and Minnesota (shootout loss). It’s probably worth noting that so many of those games were very close and they’ve now had two days off since their last game. LA stays at home after tonight for a Saturday night visit from Carolina.

Season Series: The Kings come to Pittsburgh in a few weeks on Sunday November 9th to wrap up the season series early. Last year the Pens went 2-0-0 against LA (with an OT game to make it a 0-1-1 record for the Kings).

Hidden Stat: Los Angeles has been short-handed an NHL high 22 times this young season in just four games and at 68.2%, their seven goals allowed on the PK ranks tied for the most in the league as of Wednesday.

Getting to know the Kings

Andrei Kuzmenko – Anze Kopitar? – Adrian Kempe

Kevin Fiala – Qunton Byfield – Joel Armia

Warren Foegele – Philip Danault – Trevor Moore

Jeff Malott – Alex Turcotte – Alex Laferriere

Brian Dumoulin / Drew Doughty

Joel Edmundson / Brandt Clarke

Mikey Anderson / Cody Ceci

Goalies: Anton Forsberg and Pheonix Copley

Scratches: Samuel Helenius, Jacob Moverare, Darcy Kuemper (injured)

IR: Corey Perry, Kyle Burroughs

—Kopitar sounds like a true ‘game time decision’ after missing practice yesterday with an undisclosed injury. The Kings didn’t alter the rest of the lines, it sounds like they’re hopeful but uncertain that he will be able to play.

—There is less optimism around Kuemper, who it’s looking like won’t be available to play today with an injury. That puts Forsberg in-line to start tonight, the Kings just re-acquired Copley from Tampa via a trade yesterday (who LA recently lost to the waiver wire to TB) as Copley continues to bounce around to a team in need of a backup goalie.

—It’s an “old guys rule” theme today for Pittsburgh sports on a night where ancient QB’s Aaron Rodgers and Joe Flacco are going to duel it out. The Kings/Pens have plenty of their own elder statesmen between Kopitar, Perry, Doughty, Kuemper, Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Karlsson all being 35+ years old with several pushing 40, though Perry won’t be joining in tonight.

—The Kings and Pens are also similar that if you only look at their top two forward lines they look pretty impressive. Then you get to the lower halves and defensive part of the lineup…

The Kings’ biggest off-season moves were to sign Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci, who signed for three and four years respectively at $4.0m and $4.5m cap hits. The moves were immediately panned as unwise and clowned all over social media, and in the early going of the season that has come to pass in a major way. Dumoulin/Ceci as a pair were outshot 28-13, outscored 5-0 and had to be split apart. Figuring out how to utilize these two former Penguins is going to be a tall task and a potentially lingering issue for LA for the foreseeable future, it brings no joy to show that in a very brief sample that Dumoulin has dragged Doughty down to a 38 xGF%. They had no choice but to eliminate a disaster Dumoulin/Ceci pair, but now the trade off means those players split up could negatively effect even more of the team on separate pairings.

It hurts more since the team lost Vladislav Gavrikov, who signed with NYR for a $7.0 million cap hit. In theory, replacing the one player in the aggregate with multiple ones may pay off in some disciplines but the issue was the age and ability of what the Kings went out and got at this point of the careers of Ceci and Dumoulin.

Rickard Rakell – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust

Anthony Mantha – Evgeni Malkin – Justin Brazeau

Tommy Novak – Ben Kindel – Philip Tomasino

Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Filip Hallander

Parker Wotherspoon / Erik Karlsson

Matthew Dumba / Connor Clifton

Goalies: Arturs Silovs, Tristan Jarry

Potential Scratches: Noel Acciari, Caleb Jones, Harrison Brunicke

IR: Kevin Hayes (upper body, week-to-week), Jack St. Ivany (week-to-week, lower body), Rutger McGroarty (indefinite, upper body), Joel Blomqvist (week-to-week, lower body)

The Penguins only have seven 5v5 goals through the four games that they’ve played. Just imagine where the team would be without Justin Brazeau’s three 5v5 goals! (Who would have imagined that would be a sentence with all those words touching even 10 days ago?)

On the bright side, at least the Pens are creating chances and getting good looks but they need to start finishing. Unfortunately that last statement is an all too common in this post-playoff era of the Penguins. It would be one thing if they weren’t good enough to generate chances, but failing to be able to convert into goals has been a cruel twist of fate for a team that as recently as 2021 scored 201 5v5 goals on 168 xGF, held strong in 2021-22 with 180 goals vs 178 xGF in the last year they made the playoffs. Since then, it’s been over a cliff:

Show me a team that develops a consistent trend of failing to convert on their chances and I’ll show you a bad team. In a related note, there are disturbing signs that song is starting all over again already with the Pens netting 7 goals against their 10 xGF in the early going of 2025-26.

It doesn’t help that Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin have a goose egg in 5v5 goals, though Malkin has three 5v5 assists and Crosby has two. Bryan Rust has only played two of the games and been held without a goal. Rickard Rakell’s only ES goal came off a deflection last game, he’s yet to score a goal from a shot he’s generated himself. Despite the playmaking inputs (which do count for something), any instance where those four star players combine for only a single goal over a four-game stretch means the chances are the Pittsburgh offense isn’t in a good place in that time. And it’s hasn’t been with only 2.16 goals/60. Those four combined for 69 5v5 goals last season, sooner or later they will start filling the net with more frequency based on the chances they are generating but for now it’s a sore spot that they have run cold. (In fact, one could see signals that the turnaround is already showing signs of taking place: Crosby was on the ice for absolutely zero 5v5 goals for in the first three games of the season, but then assisted on two 5v5 goals last game against Anaheim).

To compound the matter, the third and fourth lines put together only have one 5v5 goal, via rookie Ben Kindel. Those lines aren’t expected to produce in spades, but one goal in 24-combined man games from the bottom six is an uninspiring contribution in totality.

The defense has matched that meager output with one goal through their own 24-combined man games, via rookie Harrison Brunicke. That’s to be expected, last year the Pens only received 21 5v5 goals from all their defensemen all season. Blueliners aren’t counted on to produce 5v5 goals themselves, and at least Ryan Shea was sending in deflectable point shots to boost the forwards.

So you can cut the defense a break here, but the outlook has to be less charitable for the forwards. The helpers aren’t helping out much. That of course doesn’t apply to the one-man wrecking crew known as Brazeau, and to a lesser degree of Anthony Mantha who was able to chip in his first 5v5 goal last game, which is more than all the rest of the forwards not named Kindel or Rakell can say.

The good news is that you would think tonight could be a chance to start getting right. The Kings have been a hot mess defensively this season in terms of breakdowns and conceding goals against, 16 in the four games. As mentioned in the hidden stat, a lot of that bleeding has come on their penalty kill but the circumstance should be right for Pittsburgh. The Pens will likely see 32-year old backup Forsberg in net, who has a career GAA north of 3 (3.05 to be exact) and a losing record of 75-81-14. This Pittsburgh team is going to have to pick its spots and exploit the teams where they can, tonight ought to be a pretty good opportunity for the offense to come to life.

Focus on: the penalty kill

The Pens’ penalty kill has perhaps been their biggest culprit in their last two games, which not so coincidentally doubles as both of their losses in the season. It’s certainly one of the most visible and glaring issues the team has right now, given the late penalty and almost immediate goal against with 1:27 to go that turned getting at least a point in overtime into a stone cold regulation loss. The Pittsburgh PK is only 6 for the last 10, giving up a pair of goals while shorthanded in each of their losses. An underlying issue can be readily seen by the team stress-testing their penalty kill with 10 opponent power plays in two games, which creates a tough spot to be at in the first place.

LA’s power play has scored a modest three power play goals in their four games, on 13 attempts on the season (23.1%). Kopitar has factored into all three PPG the Kings have this year with assists, and he figures to be at less than 100% today — if he is even able to play at all while dealing with his injury.

The Penguins may not win this game even with a great night on the PK, but if they get rung up for a PPG against (or two..or three..) the odds of losing sky rocket. That will be a focus to watch and see tonight; first if Pittsburgh can effectively stay out of the penalty box more than they have been in recent games, and second to limit the damage and steady their ship in that regard when they are shorthanded.