February 7 Rapid Reaction (feat. Jim Fox): Kings 3, Flyers 2 (SO)

Rapid Reaction, feat. Jim Fox

Post-game Quotes

Willie Desjardins, on the win:
The guys played hard. I thought we had a great first period, and even after that we battled the whole night. It was good – everybody played a part in it.

Desjardins, on the younger players’ impact in the win:
Yeah, if you look at Amadio’s line while it was Clifford and Wagner, they had lots of chances tonight. Like, that line was very good for us. Had probably most of our chances in the first two periods, five-on-five. Even outside that, Leipsic played hard, Toffoli was good, lots of guys contributed. And on the back end too, Walker came in and was good. LaDue was good, so we had lots of guys playing hard.

Desjardins, on any differences in Adrian Kempe’s game amidst his scoring spike:
A little bit, but it’s funny. When you start scoring, you get confidence. When nothing’s ever going in you wonder if you should shoot, and then it starts going in and now you’re looking to shoot. A big part of our game is confidence, and I think he’s playing with a little bit more confidence right now. I don’t think he changed his game. I think things just started to go for him, and as a result he got more confident.

Desjardins, on whether lob passes tried to use Austin Wagner’s speed or were based on pre-scouting:
No, I think it was just guys making good reads. I thin they can see their D are real aggressive and standing up, and they realize that if we could get something behind him maybe we could skate into it. We had tow really good chances off of it.

Desjardins, on Wagner’s line:
Yeah, I liked them. As I mentioned, I thought Amadio was good with that grouping. I thought all the lines played pretty good, I thought everybody contributed tonight.

Desjardins, on the next shooter if Tyler Toffoli had not scored:
Yeah, Leipsic was probably going to go.

Desjardins, on whether he chose Tyler Toffoli, 0-for-10 in shootouts, because he’d been playing well:
Maybe a little bit. We talked a little bit on the bench, and I just think that he is a good shooter, and it was good to see him take charge of it.

Desjardins, on whether Alec Martinez is fine after his high stick:
Yeah, he’s good. He just got a cut, so he’s good.

Drew Doughty, on Austin Wagner’s speed:
Definitely his number one quality is he’s faster than every single person on the ice. You know, he would give a run with McDavid there, but yeah it was a good catch and release play by him tonight. He had a great shot, he had another breakaway, and yeah, he was flying. So we’re really happy when we see young guys step to the plate and play big like that and Wags is a hard worker and a good person, so we’re happy for him.

Doughty, on Wagner being nervous that he would get called up for the shootout:
I think a lot of guys are going before him.

Doughty, on whether there is an added focus on the playoff standings as of late:
Well, I think we smell it a little more now that we did this, but we can’t take our foot off the gas pedal. We know we need to keep winning hockey games. We have like 28 games left, we basically got to win twenty-something of those. We’re ready for that challenge and we’re excited about the challenge and we’re going to do everything we can to keep this rolling.

Doughty, on giving up a goal at the end of the third period:
We deserved that win. We still felt that we were going to win it no matter what. You know, they tie it up late like that, good play by them. They have one extra guy on the ice, stuff’s going to happen. But we never gave up, probably should have won it in OT with a few chances there. But you know what? Before they tied it up, we had about three breakaways in the third that we should have scored on and that would have put the game away. We deserved that the whole way through, no doubt.

Doughty, on if there is a level of confidence now that had been missing previously:
For sure. We feel good about ourselves now. We can’t get too high though, but our confidence is definitely growing. Just this feeling, winning hockey games is the best feeling as a hockey player in the world. When you do it, you just want to keep having that feeling every single night. Before the game we just say let’s have that feeling we had the other night, and we got it again, so we’re all pumped in here.

Adrian Kempe, on whether he knew right away that he had scored during the shootout:
At the moment, I was let’s say 90% sure it hit the white thing in the back. That was a good feeling, obviously, they confirmed it.

Kempe, on getting the two points:
They’ve been good lately and it was a tough game coming in here and we knew right away that they were going to come out hard. Our first period was probably our best period. We played really well in the first. We got pucks deep and really created some chances. It ended up being a tight game, but that’s what we expected as well and we’re really glad that we got the extra point today, so it was a good team effort.

Kempe, on the team’s confidence right now:
Obviously when you win you get a little more confidence and I think everybody on the team has been playing really good on this road trip so far. You can feel the team game is really there right now and that’s what we need right now. We need everybody to be going. We’re playing well against all the teams over here and I think everybody has been doing a good job so far, so we definitely got to keep it going and keep this momentum.

Kempe, on whether the team is thinking about the postseason:
Obviously we’re getting closer and closer. We haven’t played good enough so far in the season, but I think in the last couple of weeks we’ve been starting to figure it out, and the structure is there and, as I said, the team game has been there the last couple of games and we have to take that with us and keep it one game at a time.

Austin Wagner, on feeling energized at start of the game:
Yeah, I had a pretty good warmup today. I was feeling good today, I went out there and played my game and just did my thing. Cliff played great, I thought our line did pretty good and everyone else followed through. I thought we played a good all-around team game and that’s what we need to do every night.

Wagner, on the difference he has seen in the team since the break:
Yeah I think we’re playing pretty good. We are tightening up on the D-zone, and playing with confidence, making some plays—at the end of the day we’re doing a lot of things right and we’re focusing on the details. I think coming out of that break we knew we had to make a push for playoffs. We’re still in a spot to make it and we’re trying to push for playoffs right now.

Wagner, on whether he thought his name would get called as the shootout progressed:
Yeah, Cliff and I were starting to think about it once it got to like the twelfth shooter, we were a little bit scared. I was a little bit nervous, my breakaway earlier in the game didn’t go well, so I was hoping I could possibly redeem myself there.

Wagner, on whether the ice was to blame for not being able to settle the puck on his breakaway:
Not really, I kicked it and it popped straight up.

Post-game Notes

–With the win, Los Angeles improved to 47-85-17 all-time against Philadelphia, a record that includes a road mark of 23-41-9. The Kings are 7-2-2 in their last 11 visits to Wells Fargo Center. These teams concluded their season series with Los Angeles going 1-1-0 and Philadelphia going 1-0-1.

–With the win, Los Angeles improved to 9-12-2 against the Eastern Conference, 7-5-1 against the Metropolitan Division, 11-4-4 in one-goal games, 16-4-1 when scoring first, 9-0-0 when leading after one period, 16-1-1 when leading after two periods, 7-4 in games decided after regulation and 8-10-1 when outshooting their opponent.

–Jonathan Quick improved to 1-1 in shootouts this season and 43-33 in his career. By stopping four of six shooters, he is now 186/268 (.694) in his career against individual shooters. Ilya Kovalchuk improved to 2/3 this season and 26/65 in his career, Anze Kopitar fell to 1/3 this season and 38/101 in his career, Adrian Kempe improved to 1/1 this season and 3/4 in his career, Alex Iafallo fell to 0/1 this season and 0/1 in his career, Dustin Brown fell to 0/2 this season and 19/65 in his career, and Tyler Toffoli improved to 1/1 this season and 1/11 in his career.

–The Kings ended the Flyers’ eight-game winning streak. When they visited last season on December 18, 2017, they ended a Flyers six-game winning streak.

–Los Angeles won three games in a row for the second time this season. Their season-high is four straight games, set from December 18-27. They are 12-7-1 in their last 20 games.

–With a 2-for-2 performance, Kings penalty killers have killed off 11 consecutive shorthanded situations. The Flyers entered the game 7-for-10 on the power play over their previous three games.

–Adrian Kempe extended his goal streak to three games (four goals total).

–Anze Kopitar’s five-game point streak (3-6=9) was snapped.

–Los Angeles attempted 62 shots (39 on goal, 10 blocked, 13 missed). Philadelphia attempted 62 shots (32 on goal, 16 blocked, 14 missed). Austin Wagner and Ivan Provorov tied with a game-high five shots on goal. All Kings registered a shot on goal except for Michael Amadio.

–Los Angeles won 30-of-60 faceoffs (50%). Adrian Kempe won 7-of-11, Michael Amadio won 3-of-8, Anze Kopitar won 12-of-25, Ilya Kovalchuk won 0-of-1, Alex Iafallo won 1-of-1, Nate Thompson won 7-of-12, Carl Hagelin won 0-of-1 and Tyler Toffoli won 0-of-1.

Post-game Highlights