Kings gear up for stretch run in bid to make playoffs

The Kings’ final 14 games, beginning with their victory over the Ducks on Tuesday, will either bring a sense of urgency or a feeling of futility as their days to close the gap in the standings and make the playoffs count down.

“We all know how important each game is right now, and, starting tonight, we’re fighting for our lives,” said winger Andreas Athanasiou, who scored to put the Kings up 3-0 Tuesday. “If we want to be where we want to be, we know what we have to do, and it starts right now.”

The Kings find themselves equidistant between the playoffs — five points behind the fourth-place Arizona Coyotes — and the cellar, now leading the Ducks by five points.

They are scheduled to play three back-to-backs down the stretch, and that is without knowing the dates of their as-yet rescheduled meetings with the Colorado Avalanche. But because those games were postponed, the Kings were able to put in extra work with six days between their last game and Tuesday’s showdown.

“We had some good practice days and went over some good system work, so it’s all in place to go out there and just execute,” Athanasiou said.

Layoffs had not been overly kind to the Kings before Tuesday. Of the seven times they had two or more days in between games, they had won just two of the seven games following those breaks, and only one of four games with more than two days between matches.

Ten of the Kings’ final 14 games will be played in Southern California, with eight home games and two visits to Honda Center. In total, they will play the lastplace Ducks five times, including four straight scheduled games. They’ll play Arizona and St. Louis, the main teams they are chasing for the final playoff berth, three times and once, respectively.

The Kings have posted winning records against both clubs. Entering Tuesday’s schedule, they had games in hand as well — they’d played four fewer games than Arizona and one less than St. Louis.

Bjornfot, Roy return

Defensemen Matt Roy (COVID protocol-related absence) and Tobias Bjornfot upper-body injury) were back in the mix for the Kings on Tuesday.

The Kings have struggled to ice six NHL defensemen with the coaching staff’s complete confidence this season, and missing two regulars exacerbated that struggle.

Roy had recovered from the virus and had been skating with the team over the weekend; he last played April 2. Bjornfot suffered a concussion in a March 31 meeting with Vegas when he was elbowed by Golden Knights center Chandler Stephenson.

“He’s recovering from a head injury, which you’ve got to get back on the saddle and ride the horse again,” McLellan said. “The corner work, the puck retrievals, the aggressiveness than he plays with. He has a chance down the stretch to establish himself and set himself up moving forward.”