Here’s my game story from tonight, with stats and video. Thanks for reading!
Also, a reminder that there are only a handful of tickets remaining for the LAKingsInsider.com suite at Thursday’s game against Edmonton, which is also Wayne Simmonds bobblehead night. For more information, click here.
Terry Murray’s postgame thoughts…
MURRAY: “It was a nice run, a very nice run. Guys really dug in, through some very hard games, a long road trip, come from behind, a lot of playing hard for each other, a lot of perseverance through some difficult games there. To find a way to stretch the streak to nine was tremendous. Tonight, we rallied in the third period, but Anaheim brought their `A’ game here today and we didn’t match it. They were carrying the game to us. We were chasing it, in the first and second period in particular, and we didn’t manage the puck through the middle of the ice. Just too many times, we let them come back at us with a lot of speed of the transition.”
Drew Doughty’s postgame thoughts…
(on the game…)
DOUGHTY: “I thought we weren’t there to play in the first two periods. We were OK. we weren’t awful or anything like that, but we weren’t the team we were in the third. We took it to them the whole time, and we had so many chances, and it’s too bad we couldn’t put the puck in the net. But we have to play every period like we did in that third period, and then we’ll be winning more games.”
Anze Kopitar’s postgame thoughts…
(on the end of the winning streak…)
KOPITAR: “That was one of those games where Anaheim had a lot of energy and a lot of emotion. We fell a little short. I thought the nine-game winning streak was good, but now we’ve got to look at this game and learn something from it and get a new one again.”
(on what the Kings can learn from the game…)
KOPITAR: “The game is 60 minutes. That second period, we were making a lot of turnovers and they made us pay. We took a couple penalties because of the turnovers, and they make you pay on the power play.”
The Kings had their nine-game winning streak snapped, and also lost to the Ducks for the first time in four meetings this season. More from the locker room ASAP…
A Kings spokesman said Rob Scuderi left the game with flu-like symptoms and will not return tonight.
Rob Scuderi has been out since the latter part of the third period and is not on the bench at the start of the third period. No update on his status yet…
Shots were 17-12 Ducks in the period and are 26-19 Ducks for the game. The Ducks are 18-1-4 when leading after two periods this season.
A goal with 1:04 remaining in the second period allowed the Kings to pull within one goal. At the end of a power play, Anze Kopitar executed a give-and-go play with Ryan Smyth. Kopitar passed, then went to the net and one-timed a shot past Hiller.
The Ducks got their two-goal lead back just 24 seconds later. Corey Perry carried the puck into the Kings’ zone, skated a little wide of Sean O’Donnell to create space, then sent a wrist shot to the far post that cleanly beat Quick with 1:30 remaining.
The Ducks extended their lead to 3-1 with a power-play goal 6:24 into the second period. Selanne shot from the far edge of the left faceoff circle. Saku Koivu had position on Jarret Stoll in front of the Kings’ net and tucked the puck past Quick.
A behind-the-net breakdown cost the Kings as the Ducks took the lead 3:27 into the second period. With the puck behind the Kings’ net, both Davis Drewiske and Oscar Moller went to play it. Corey Perry beat both to the puck, and sent a quick centering pass to Ryan Getzlaf, who shot and scored from close range.
Ryan Smyth missed the last seven-plus minutes of the first period, but was back on the bench to start the second period.
Shots were 9-7 Ducks in the first period. Ryan Smyth had to leave the ice after getting hit by a shot in the first period. He returned to the bench briefly but then limped back to the locker room. I’ll pass along updates as I get them…
The Ducks tied the game with a 5-on-3 goal with 1:30 remaining in the period, after Matt Greene took a delay-of-game penalty and the Kings took a too many men on the ice penalty. After a scramble in front of the Kings’ net, Teemu Selanne knocked in the puck from the side of the net.
Jonathan Quick kept the game scoreless in the first 10 minutes as the Kings had another slow start, but the Kings took the lead with 7:19 remaining in the first period. Alexander Frolov had the puck in the right circle and tried to spin and shoot. The puck rolled off his stick, but Oscar Moller, in front of the net, took a backhand swipe at it and pushed it past Hiller.
The Kings are riding a franchise-record nine-game winning streak, but it’s certainly accurate to say they have not been dominating some of those games. Detroit controlled the first and third periods Saturday, and the Kings blew a three-goal lead in the third period against Anaheim and had to rally to win. Today, Terry Murray was asked what he thought his players needed to improve upon tonight…
MURRAY: “We have to manage the puck better. Anaheim, to me, is the same in that if you don’t make hard plays through the middle of the ice, they’re a team that transitions the puck so well, and they’ve got some real mobile people back on the blue line that are going to be a part of the attack. You just can’t make critical errors through the middle of the ice. That will be one of the keys to the game for me, to give ourselves an opportunity to get play going in their end and not constantly try to regroup and track into our D-zone.”
After the Ducks’ skate this morning, coach Randy Carlyle talked about his team’s need to make things tougher for Kings goalie Jonathan Quick, to get traffic in front of the net and not allow Quick to see shots cleanly. That’s pretty much the goal of every team, against every goalie, but given the size of some of the Ducks’ forwards, they’re more equipped than most to get it done. The Kings can counter with Quick, who also has good size and doesn’t get pushed around, in front of the net, the way smaller goalies might. After his team’s skate, Terry Murray talked about the need for his players to play a strong game in front of their net.
MURRAY: “That’s it right there. You just have to do a strong job in front of the net. And you’re not going to eliminate it. They’ve got some great players over there. You’ve got big bodies and you’re going to try to limit the number of times they can get position, but your defensemen, your low tracker, they have to work very hard to get proper body positioning. We’ve got to get in some lanes up top, with the defensemen. They’ve got some guys who are very mobile up there. They do a lot of rotating in the top, so they can find some seams, but we have to work hard on the checking part of the game. But that’s hockey. Going to the net and battling hard, that’s the exciting part of the game.”
Tonight, Brad Richardson gets a chance to return to Honda Center, where it basically all started for him this season. Richardson had played 26 games before Dec. 1 but had not recorded a single point. Then, he had a second-period assist and scored the game-winning goal in the third period. That game started a remarkable rise for Richardson, who went from being a borderline fourth-line player to being, at one point, a first-line left winger.
Richardson will continue to skate with Wayne Simmonds, but they will flip centers and pick up Jarret Stoll. This morning, Terry Murray reflected on how far Richardson has come since early December.
MURRAY: “That’s when he started to show that he was the type of player he kept telling me he was. The confidence, the ability to check, be responsible and used in special teams, penalty killing in particular. And showing some skill level with the puck. He has played himself into the situation that he’s in right now. He was never in my doghouse. It’s just that I came in last year and we needed to change some things around, and everybody had to buy in, and he wasn’t able to get the job done. Clearly, this year he has become an important player.”
Scott Niedermayer, Anaheim’s future Hall of Fame defenseman, started his NHL career during the 1991-92 season, when Drew Doughty was 2 years old. How’s that for some perspective? The defensemen will be on opposite sides tonight, but they will be on the same side, for Canada, next week when the Olympic hockey tournament starts.
When league followers talk about the player Doughty might become some day, Niedermayer’s name is often mentioned. Here’s what Niedermayer said this morning, when asked for his impressions of Doughty’s play this season…
NIEDERMAYER: “I think the big thing is just that he’s playing with a lot of confidence. That goes a long way for anybody, whether you’re a second-year guy or a 15-year guy. When you’re playing with confidence and you feel like what you’re going to do is going to work, good things are going to happen when you’re at your best. Right now, that’s how that whole team is, but he’s playing with a lot of confidence right now.”
Ryan Miller got a lot of attention for his flashy Team USA helmet. I got a chance to see Jonathan Quick’s Olympic helmet and ask him about the story behind it, which involves a childhood friend. You can read the story by clicking below, and also see part of the helmet. I’m hoping there are other pictures I can post that give a more complete look at the helmet…
Rich Hammond has covered the Kings, on a full-time or part-time basis, since the 2000-01 season. He previously worked at the Los Angeles Daily News, was the beat writer for the entire John Torchetti era and has witnessed Bob Miller singing country music in a Nashville honky-tonk bar.E-mail Rich at lakingsinsider@gmail.com |