January 7 Rapid Reaction: Sharks 3, Kings 1

Post-game Quotes

Willie Desjardins, on trying to emerge from San Jose’s waves of momentum despite playing well:
They’re a good team. They’ve got lots of depth. They’re hard to play against. I thought we had a good start in the first period again. I thought that was going to be key, and I thought we were ready at the start. Probably the difference is we had three kills. If we had power plays the other way – and I’m not saying anything with the referee – it just makes a difference when you’re not on the power play.

Desjardins, on the third period too many men on the ice call:
No, it was too many men. It was the right call.

Desjardins, on generating a solid road performance:
We did. This is a tough building to come in and I thought our guys showed a lot of energy. We got stuff out of every line, too. It’s nice to be able to play all four lines. I thought they all played well, and I think our D are getting better all the time. I thought they were holding the line, I thought their gaps were good today. Lots of good things inside of it. We still have to score more than one goal. We’ve got to get some goals.

Desjardins, on the Forbort-Doughty pairing:
Yeah, they were good. I thought Forby moved the puck well in the first period. I liked all our D pairings, though. I think everybody played hard in that group.

Desjardins, on why the offense has struggled this season:
I think we’ve got to put more pucks to the net. I think we had some zone time, especially in the second period, and we never got anything to the net off it. We have to make decision as a group. That’s probably San Jose’s biggest strength is how they put pucks to the net all the time and guys are going there for tips. That’s probably their key offensive weapon, so I think we can pick up some stuff from their game.

Desjardins, on whether it was important to get Jack Campbell a start:
Maybe a bit. He’s a good goaltender. He does lots of good things in there, and he was good again tonight for us.

Drew Doughty, on the difference-maker in tonight’s game:
I thought we didn’t score enough goals obviously. We always seem to struggle with them. We’ll get four in one game and then we’ll go the next game and we’ll get one goal. We can’t rely on our goalies to only give up one or two goals every game and expect to win hockey games, that’s the bottom line. It’s a three-two league. We need to be getting two or three goals every night to win.

Doughty, on controlling the Sharks’ waves of momentum:
We just got to get back to making things simple and getting pucks in deep on their guy. You know, we say it all the time, but if they have the momentum and you start getting cute, you turn over the puck and they have the momentum again, so you need to get pucks in deep. That’s the bottom line and when we get away from that, we struggle. And the only time they got momentum tonight was when we didn’t handle the puck and didn’t make the right plays.

Doughty, on him and Forbort as a defensive pair:
Me and Forbs have been great together, I think. I’m minus or whatever, but that’s all empty net goals. Forbs plays great hockey. You know he’s so good at playing defense. I love playing with him so much. He’s a great guy off the ice, a good friend of mine, and we obviously can work on things to get better, but tonight I thought we had a good game. But, like I said, we can work on things to get better.

Doughty, on whether the chippiness was a result of San Jose getting under their skin:
Nope, that’s just San Jose versus LA Kings I think. We, as much as we respect each other, we don’t like each other. It’s a rival game when we’re chasing them in the standings we need to get back into a playoff spot and we want to win very, very badly and so do they and sometimes the emotion gets the best of you and things get chippy. But that’s the most fun part about this game of hockey is rivalries and having a chippy game. I absolutely love that stuff.

Jack Campbell, on tonight being a typical Kings-Sharks matchup:
I thought we battled really hard. I thought we played a really good game. Definitely deserved a win. I’ve just gotta come up with that save in the second, you know, keep it at one. But I thought the boys played really hard and we definitely deserved to win that game.

Campbell, on his first NHL game at SAP Center:
First NHL game here and it was a fun building to play. Like, super loud and they have a really good team — difficult team — to play against. I’ve watched Quickie play ‘em a bunch and, you know, they really zip that puck around and watching it on TV or on the bench is a lot different than being out there, so I got a lot to learn and get better at. It was a good experience, but I’ve got to get a lot better, for sure.

Campbell, on the difficulty in reading the puck off a backhand shot:
Yeah. Muzz played it perfect, it just fooled me a little bit. I just got to come up with that save.

Campbell, on how he felt seeing the puck overall:
Yeah, it was good. I thought we did a great job. I mean they’re a big, strong team going to the net. They like a lot of redirections and they’re really good at it and, you know, I thought we were under stick. They didn’t have a whole lot of deflections. I was seeing the puck well, so credit to the forwards and the defensemen for sure.

Post-game Notes

–With the loss, Los Angeles fell to 66-67-20 all-time against San Jose, a record that includes a road mark of 27-38-12. Monday’s game was the first this between the two teams this season that did not extend into overtime. These teams have one game remaining this season: March 21 at Staples Center.

–With the loss, the Kings fell to 12-14-1 against the Western Conference, 8-8-1 against the Pacific Division, 3-7 in two-goal games, 4-21-2 when their opponent scores first, 2-15-2 when trailing after the first period, 0-19-1 when trailing after the second period and 10-16-2 when outshot by their opponent.

–Monday’s loss was the 16th time this season in 44 games Los Angeles scored zero goals or one goal during the run of play.

–Per NHL Public Relations, Erik Karlsson became the sixth defenseman in NHL history to record at least one assist in at least 13 consecutive appearances.

–The Kings attempted 44 shots (23 on goal, 16 blocked, 5 missed). The Sharks attempted 60 shots (29 on goal, 20 blocked, 11 missed). Evander Kane led all skaters with six shots on goal, while Jake Muzzin finished with a team-high four for L.A.

–Los Angeles won 25-of-49 shots (51%). Adrian Kempe won 2-of-4, Anze Kopitar won 14-of-24, Brendan Leipsic won 0-of-1, Ilya Kovalchuk won 0-of-1, Nate Thompson won 5-of-11, Carl Hagelin won 0-of-1 and Jeff Carter won 4-of-7.

Tuesday, January 8 is a scheduled off-day for the Kings. The next practice is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, January 9.

Post-game Highlights

–Lead photo via Brandon Magnus/NHLI

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.