Waking up with the Kings: January 13

Thursday night’s game, a 5-1 win over the St. Louis Blues, serves as the perfect counterpoint to any lazy argument that the Los Angeles Kings are “too slow” or “not equipped to play the modern game.” In an encompassment of the Kings’ thrust under Darryl Sutter, they spent minimal time in their own zone and moved the puck up-ice with an excellent pace and capitalized on the many scoring chances they generated off the rush. On several goals, it was almost like watching their practice breakouts. Touch passes helped clear the zone easily and facilitated crisp movement and wide swaths of the neutral zone were surrendered during the unfamiliar lapses in checking by a St. Louis team that has struggled to win consistently away from Scottrade Center. The Blues have traditionally forechecked well under Ken Hitchcock, but Los Angeles’ defensemen ably withstood the pressure below the hashmarks, with Alec Martinez’ spin and backhanded feed to evade Patrik Berglund in passing the puck to Anze Kopitar in setting up Jake Muzzin’s second goal serving as an appropriate encapsulation of the need to have mobile defensemen in the modern game. The Kings also took advantage of a leaky Jake Allen, but with the way they transitioned the puck up-ice, L.A. forced errors that weren’t entirely on the goaltender.

Los Angeles has now scored 13 goals in its last three games and finally was able to cash in on the early chances they generated. Outscored 6-0 in first periods in the three games of the home stand prior to Thursday, the Kings took advantage of an errant Jori Lehtera high stick, with Muzzin relying on a Dustin Brown screen to rip a puck inside the far post following the first of many clean, controlled entries into the offensive zone. With that goal, the Kings played with a first period lead for the first time since the win over San Jose on New Year’s Eve, and, on a heady play by Trevor Lewis in the final minutes of the first period, doubled the lead when Jake Allen, who was also contending with Kopitar streaking towards the net, wasn’t able to recover from a puck that deflected off Alex Pietrangelo’s stick immediately after Lewis’ release.

“Power plays run hot and cold.” – Darryl Sutter, about a dozen times over the last five years. Los Angeles’ power play is currently hot, having totaled six goals on 19 opportunities – including several big goals, such as the one that allowed them to play with the lead last night – over the last six games. The penalty killing has also continued its nice stretch after some minor blemishes just prior to the turn of the new year, having killed off 41 of the last 45 opportunities. Interestingly, Darryl Sutter wasn’t particularly happy with the team’s five-on-five play last night. Some of that might be related to a score-affected third period, but it would be interesting to know what he saw in a game in which the Kings limited the Blues to two shots on goal in the second period and eight shots total through the first 40 minutes. Part of Los Angeles’ sturdy penalty killing performance came in a rebound game for Peter Budaj, who stopped all five shots he faced while his team was shorthanded.