Waking up with the Kings: February 8

The Kings’ 4-2 win over the Lightning on Saturday hinged on a sequence of three or four plays 12 minutes into the third period. With Ondrej Palat leading a two-on-one and Tyler Johnson finding space to his right on a rush into Los Angeles’ end, Drew Doughty made a supreme defensive play by diving to take away the pass, and as Palat wasn’t expecting such a sudden lack of space, his follow-up shot attempt was suppressed as well. Doughty tied Palat up along the boards as there was still an opportunity to get the puck to the front of the net, but Regehr denied a shot attempt before depositing the puck blow the left wing hash marks, where Justin Williams picked it up and led a breakout with Anze Kopitar. Kopitar fed the puck back to Williams, who had speed and space while gaining the offensive zone along the right wing, and his blast that beat Andrei Vasilevskiy was a debilitating insurance marker that allowed the bus driver to start the engines for the trip to the airport. The Kings were opportunistic on Saturday, with Tyler Toffoli using a savvy individual effort on a forecheck to steal a bouncing puck from Valtteri Filppula along the boards before striding alone in front of the net and beating Ben Bishop off his body, the post and in 1:33 into the game. He, like Trevor Lewis, was excellent.

Leading two-nothing with under a minute to play in the first period, an outstanding shift by the Gaborik-Kopitar-Brown line maintained possession in the offensive zone as Doughty beat a Dustin Brown-screened Bishop with 1.5 seconds remaining. Chances weren’t squandered on Saturday as the Kings were able to get pucks and bodies to the front of the net and relied upon 62% of their shot attempts finding their way to the goal. Of the Lightning’s 58 shot attempts, more than half were either blocked or missed the net. The two teams entered the evening tied for the league lead in raw five-on-five Corsi – and the Kings out-shot the league’s highest scoring team – and by limiting the Lightning to two goals while relying on five defensemen, it’s clear that the team can be proud of its strong defensive effort. Darryl Sutter referenced Jonathan Quick’s terrific performance after the game while also noting that the team is adapting to having to win games by scoring three goals given the rise in scoring chances against.

Jake Muzzin was victimized in a highly recognizable situation for the second straight game, though in completely different circumstances from his third period turnover in Florida. On a bizarre and unlucky early second period bouncing puck, on a play virtually impossible to be replicated, he attempted to make a safe play by sending the puck behind the net, and somehow, behind the bizarre forces of physics, the puck ended up bouncing off his stick and at a nearly impossible angle directly into the path of a net-bound Nikita Nesterov, whose chip shot on the still fluttering puck found its way inside the post. He tried to make the right play but was handcuffed, which happens to players, especially those who play the amount of minutes Muzzin does. In Florida, he made a poor decision to make a play unnecessarily difficult when simpler options were available. Make sure when analyzing a player to differentiate between making a poor decision, and making the right decision but faltering in the execution. There’s also the thought I’ve heard raised that when young players sign their first large contract, they undergo temporary growing pains shortly thereafter – and that theory might not be too off-base. But as long as a player is on a general upward trajectory – and that trajectory may not be upward, upward, upward every game, but rather on a general path upward, with nooks and valleys en route – there’s not as much concern. Muzzin’s play in Florida represented one of those valleys; his turnover yesterday did not (though, overall, Saturday’s game was not among his best performances of the season). In the end, the most important aspect is that the Kings are looking for two points, and everything else is window dressing. They picked up those points on Saturday.