Waking up with the Kings: January 8

After a sleepy 10 minutes yielded a pair of goals to the opposition – one on a stoppable Mikko Koivu shot, and one on a nice hustle play by Charlie Coyle, who buried the puck after his chip behind the net off a faceoff allowed Jason Pominville to wrap the puck in front – Los Angeles called a timeout and for much of the remaining 50 minutes had a good grasp on the game. This bore fruit in the second period, when Jeff Carter’s patented shot from the right wing off a rush beat Staples Center nemesis Darcy Kuemper glove-side. That’s not a scoring chance for most players, and while it’s a goal that Kuemper would probably want another kick at the can at, when Carter shoots at a high speed from a few inches outside of the right faceoff dot, that’s still a scoring chance. Carter also lent a skate to the game-tying goal, kicking an errant Drew Doughty pass onto the blade of his stick to continue a play before working the puck up ice to Marian Gaborik and heading to the bench. This may have been Gaborik’s best play all season: He softly chipped the puck past Jared Spurgeon and then lifted Spurgeon’s stick to maintain possession of the puck before pulling it between Ryan Suter’s legs and issuing a backhander from close range that deflected off Kuemper’s pad and Suter’s head before bouncing into the net. That’s a highly skilled set of plays against two of the most poised, reliable defensemen in the Western Conference. After the teams exchanged goals in the first and final minute of the third period, the Kings continued their overtime mastery as three-on-three sage Tanner Pearson scored his fifth career overtime goal, if we’re including playoffs.

Darryl Sutter shared on Friday that he’s “not into percentages stuff on power plays,” but rather, as he again noted, “more interested in the power play scoring big goals.” He got a big one from Jake Muzzin, who used a short wind-up and a Tanner Pearson screen to beat Kuemper and establish the team’s first lead of the game. With a 1-for-3 effort, Los Angeles’ man advantage cashed in against a team that traditionally has a superb penalty kill (Minnesota ranked fifth in the league entering the game) and maintained its recent 33.3% rate against Bruce Boudreau-coached teams. Between 2014 and 2016, the Kings scored on 10 of 30 power play opportunities against the Ducks, a team that had the league’s top-ranked penalty kill last season. It’s not particularly applicable because the Wild has a different set of personnel, structure and assistant coaches, but rather the continuance of a trend in which the team has been able to find success against a traditionally stiff unit.

It’s almost silly to reference a forward who isn’t Carter after yet another multi-point game, but Pearson has taken advantage of the extra session to boost his own totals and help the team win some games. He was on the ice for four goals yesterday – three of which were scored by the Kings – and with Tyler Toffoli out has importantly rekindled his production link with Jeff Carter during a time when other players expected to supply offense are trying to work some scoring into their own games. He hits the net with regularity and has seen his minutes per game jump 1:32 to 15:50; he’s bested that average in eight of his last 11 games. With 11 goals, he’s on his way to his first career 20-goal season, which is a bar he should be expected to regularly break as he continues to learn the league and his opponents beyond the 184 career games to his name. He’s also playing in the offensive zone to a good degree with a 57.2% Corsi-for rating that places him 11th in the league among qualified skaters. On the game-winner, he gained a step on Jason Zucker and drove the net to deflect Alec Martinez’s crease-bound feed past Kuemper to even up the home stand at 1-1-0.