Preview: Going to California

Tonight is the start of three games in four nights in the Golden State for the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Union Blue embarks having won two in a row, over Chicago and Washington. Their opponents tonight are the Los Angeles Kings, winners of 5 of their last 7, including a back-to-back home-and-home sweep of the first place Vegas Golden Knights.

According to our sister blog Jewels from the Crown, a big part of their recent success is the return from injury of our old friend Jeff Carter.

Speaking of returns, Captain Nick Foligno was activated yesterday and will be playing tonight. Another new arrival is Thomas Vanek, acquired from Vancouver on Monday. Hopefully, these two make up for the loss of Josh Anderson, who suffered a knee sprain late in Monday’s game against Washington. Vanek will man the pivot on the first power play unit and take a top 6 winger spot. He likes to shoot and Torts is going to let him.

Projected Lineups

Artemi Panarin	Pierre-Luc Dubois	Cam Atkinson
Thomas Vanek	Alexander Wennberg	Nick Foligno
Sonny Milano	Brandon Dubinsky	Oliver BJORKSTRAND
Boone Jenner	Mark Letestu	Matt Calvert

Zach Werenski	Seth Jones
Jack Johnson	Ryan Murray
Ian Cole	David Savard

Sergei Bobrovsky

Joonas Korpisalo

Tobias Rieder	Anze Kopitar	Dustin Brown
Tanner Pearson	Jeff Carter	Tyler Toffoli
Alexander Iafallo	Nate Thompson	Adrian Kempe
Kyle Clifford	Torrey Mitchell	Michael Amadio

Derek Forbort	Drew Doughty
Alec Martinez	Dion Phaneuf
Jake Muzzin	Christian Folin

Jonathan Quick

Jack Campbell