In a 24-hour span earlier this week, the Kings lost to the NHL’s bottom team, the San Jose Sharks, and won decisively against the Pacific Division leader, the Vegas Golden Knights.

So in Saturday afternoon’s game against the Chicago Blackhawks, will the Kings stand up or fold?

Overall, they have had a solid final result (6-3-2), and in their 6-3 victory over Las VegasThey finally seemed connected and confident: “I felt like we were playing again” and “everything clicked,” said forward Adrian Kempe, who scored two points.

Since their three-game winless streak earlier in the season, the Kings are 5-2-0 and have yet to lose consecutive decisions.

“I wish there didn’t have to be a turnaround game, but I’ll give our players credit, we’ve been pretty good at bouncing back from a game that we didn’t really think we played well,” Kings coach Jim said. Hiller told reporters.

Since Hiller took over in February, the Kings have gone from road warriors to home cooking connoisseurs. Their win against Las Vegas left them with a 3-0-0 record at home this year. Their 14-3-1 home record last season under Hiller meant a cumulative mark of 17-3-1 at Crypto.com Arena, where they will be Saturday, during his tenure.

Winger Kevin Fiala scored 23 points in those 21 games, including a pair on Wednesday. He missed the previous game and a half after being benched. a home win over Utah and then banished to the press box for missing a team meeting before the San Jose game.

Hiller called Fiala “a team guy” and said there was “nothing malicious” about his actions. Fiala’s explanation for missing the meeting (which many speculated could have been related to the bench) was not a ringing endorsement of Apple products.

“My alarm didn’t go off,” Fiala told reporters. “I only had my iPad, my iPhone was broken and I never had an iPad, um, yeah, making the alarm for me, and I’ll never do it again, but, um, yeah, it didn’t go off, honestly, that’s the truth, but “I take full responsibility.”

Fiala clarified that he felt he let his teammates down and that he was very happy in the Kings organization, summing up the sequence of events by saying “sometimes it happens, you get a kick in the butt and that’s it.”

Multiple points from Fiala and Kempe were overshadowed by three-pointers from Anže Kopitar and Brandt Clarke. Kopitar became the 35th player in NHL history to reach 800 assists, and all 35 skaters are in the Hockey Hall of Fame or comfortably on their way, including the three other active players who crossed the threshold. Meanwhile, Clarke’s three assists put him within one point of second place in scoring among NHL defensemen this season.

Hiller was asked about Clarke, but opted to focus more on the riskiness of Clarke’s game and a broad analysis of how some players can earn assists without having “much effect on the game.” Six of Clarke’s 10 assists have been primary assists and he has a plus-two rating, including positive ratings in four in a row. That was despite the fact that almost half of his scores came on the power play, meaning those five points had no impact on his grade.