10/8 Preview – Chance To Make Good in Vegas + Lineup Thoughts, Forsberg, New Kings Look

TODAY’S MATCHUP: The Kings are right back at it after last night’s defeat, with a quick trip to Vegas to take on the Golden Knights in Game 2 of the 2025-26 regular season.

HEAD-TO-HEAD: Forwards Quinton Byfield, Warren Foegele and Adrian Kempe led the way last season against Vegas with six points apiece. Foegele scored a goal in all four games versus the Golden Knights to lead the team with four goals, while Byfield’s five assists were a team high. No player in the NHL scored more goals than Foegele, who became the third third player ever to post a four-game goal streak versus Vegas.

KINGS VITALS: The Kings will be the NHL’s first team to go back-to-back, as they visit the Vegas Golden Knights this evening for their home opener.

After goaltender Darcy Kuemper got the nod last night at Crypto.com Arena, look for goaltender Anton Forsberg to be between the pipes this evening in Vegas. Tonight would mark Forsberg’s debut in a Kings jersey, after he signed a two-year contract with the club on July 1. Forsberg has three career appearances against Vegas, bringing with him a 1-2-0 record with a .889 save percentage and a 3.87 goals-against average.

For reference, here’s how the Kings aligned last night against Colorado –

Tonight’s @LAKings Line Rushes –

Kuzmenko – Kopitar – Kempe
Fiala – Byfield – Laferriere
Foegele – Danault – Moore
Malott – Turcotte – Armia

Anderson – Doughty
Edmundson – Clarke
Dumoulin – Ceci

Kuemper
Forsberg

— Zach Dooley (@DooleyLAK) October 8, 2025

The Kings traveled with 22 healthy players to Vegas, with Jacob Moverare and Samuel Helenius joining the group of 20 listed above. More on any potential changes below, but as of now, expecting the same alignment tonight as we saw in Game 1.

GOLDEN KNIGHTS VITALS: Tonight is the season opener for Vegas and the debut for offseason acquisition Mitch Marner, who signed an eight-year contract with the Golden Knights.

Per Hannah Kirkell of Vegas Hockey Now, here’s how the Golden Knights lined up in Tuesday’s practice –

Golden Knights lines and pairings at practice this AM:

Barbashev—Eichel—Marner
Saad—Hertl—Dorofeyev
Smith—Karlsson—Stone
Howden—Sissons—Kolesar

McNabb—Theodore
Hanifin—Whitecloud
Lauzon—Korczak

— Hannah Kirkell (@h_kirk6) October 6, 2025

The Golden Knights announced earlier this week that defenseman Alex Pietrangelo will miss the entire season due to injury. As noted above, tonight will be Marner’s first game with the Golden Knights after he spent nine seasons in Toronto. Marner is projected to skate on the top forward line, alongside Jack Eichel and Ivan Barbashev.

Storyline Of The Day – Good To Go At It Again
Probably couldn’t ask for a better time to play back-to-back.

After last night’s game, Adrian Kempe said that if the players could’ve played another game immediately after that one they’d do it. There was a lot of disappointment in the way the Kings played last night against Colorado and it seemed to be a group very eager for a better showing. 23 hours later, they’ll get that chance.

“I think if we could play that game again, we’d want to do it [immediately],” Kempe said. “Great opportunity for us to show up again and play a better game……we’ve got to play better than we did [against Colorado].”

The reason for wanting another go is that the Kings were far from good enough last night.

“Definitely not even close to good enough” was how defenseman Drew Doughty put it after the game.

There’s so much hype and build up going into Opening Night and for the Kings, they came out looking like a team shot out of a cannon. First 10-15 minutes were energetic and I thought they had the better of the limited chances in the game. Once the dust settled, though, there were far too many mistakes, some caused by Colorado and some self-imposed. The former will happen against a team like the Avalanche and that could be overcome The self-imposed mistakes, though, often came from deviating away from what has made this team successful.

“We’ve got to forget about that right away and I’m sure we’ll watch a few things to see the things we’re doing wrong, but we all know what we were doing wrong in that game,” Doughty added “We weren’t playing our style of game and the way we’re supposed to play. We’ll put this one behind us and focus on [Vegas].”

In not playing the Kings style, Head Coach Jim Hiller wanted to see his team stick to a tried and true method of success. It felt like every time the Kings tried to make a forward pass last night it was contested. Some of that was poor passing and some was a fast and difficult Avalanche team making things hard.

Still, the solution there was not to be fancy. There were lots of drop passes, touch passes, cute passes attempted in the second period to not a lot of success. Sure, Colorado played well and they deserve their credit. But the Kings did some things that played right into their hands and that just doubled down on the problems.

The answer for Hiller is simple – forecheck.

In a game like that, as Hiller put it, the strings of passes were never going to be there and the only way to break through was to get it in and go get it back. I thought that the Danault line did that at times, at least they certainly tried to, but the Kings did not get enough of it throughout the lineup. Hiller seemed disappointed in that part of his team’s game and I think that’ll be stressed heading into a second game that doesn’t get any easier against Vegas.

Easier, no. Opportunity, yes. The Kings should be a motivated and determined group to play their style of hockey tonight. They found some success in doing that last season, including in a similar situation in Vegas. Coming in off a back-to-back, the Kings won a 6-5 thriller and looked very good in doing so. Looking for a similar fortune here this evening.

3 To Watch For –
– In terms of lineup, Jim Hiller said that last night’s approach was what the staff felt was the best 20 the Kings could ice, and then they’d “react” from there and make decisions for Game 2.

As of last night, the staff hadn’t had the chance to dive in just yet, as the game had just ended.

I’m expecting the same group tonight and here’s why. Hiller did highlight Alex Turcotte and Jeff Malott as not playing a ton due to the flow of penalties but felt that both played well.

“Turc and Malott didn’t play a lot based on the penalties but I thought both those guys played pretty well……you can’t look at them and say they were the weak link.”

Therefore, I’m not expecting a change up front based on that. On the blueline, the third pair was tagged for two goals but I don’t expect any changes there either based on Hiller’s post-game comments and the fact that we’re talking about two veteran players who played their first game with the Kings.

Should the staff feel differently this morning, Jacob Moverare and Samuel Helenius are both on the trip and are options to check in. We’ll hear from Hiller prior to the game and will add-in any potential updates should they arise.

– On Forsberg, the Kings acquired him for games like this.

They’re not necessarily looking for him to steal games, but rather just give the team a chance to win.

I think that David Rittich was maybe more likely to steal a game and he did so a few times with the Kings. Forsberg, though, should be a bit more consistent. He’s been a starter in the NHL before, as well as a part of a tandem and as a true backup, as he is expected to be with the Kings. Forsberg seems a very calm and composed customer from limited interactions thus far.

His time in LA thus far has been positive, pointing to working with Mike Buckley and the goaltending department and “learning new things every day” from another set of eyes, which is something that Kuemper pointed to last season as well. While the Kings plan to rely heavily on Kuemper, if there’s a step taken from Forsberg as well it can only improve the collective.

First look at number 31 tonight and away we go.

– Lastly, you might’ve noticed that the LA Kings wore a different jersey last night.

Surprise.

I did not want to disrupt the live thread or post a story that sat on the homepage for 10 minutes, so I wrote a few thoughts on LAKings.com. Can find them here if you’d like.

Planning a deeper dive into the jersey next week and excited to share that content soon on a quiet day! But that’s certainly not today.

Kings and Golden Knights in a 7 PM puck drop as the Kings complete a very difficult season-opening back-to-back.