– The Kings, who were 7 of 21 on the power play in their first five games, are now 1 for 12 in their last two games. The Kings went 0 for 5 on the power play Thursday, the first time this season they failed to score a power-play goal.
– The Kings went 5 for 6 on the penalty kill, coming off Wednesday’s 1-for-3 effort against the Rangers.
– Jonathan Quick stopped 27 of 31 shots. The Kings were outshot 32-26, including 15-7 in the third period.
– Dustin Brown scored his first goal of the season and tied for the team high with three hits.
– Justin Williams scored a third-period goal and has two goals and five assists in seven games.
– Anze Kopitar had a third-period assist and has at least one point in six of seven games this season (four goals, seven assists).
– Jarret Stoll had one assist, a team-high four shots on goal and also won 10 of 11 faceoffs. The Kings won 32 of 61 faceoffs.
– Sean O’Donnell got his first point of the season with a third-period assist.
– Ryan Smyth had his six-game point streak snapped. He took two minor penalties and had a minus-2 rating.
– Jack Johnson led the Kings in ice time, at 23:08 (three seconds more than Drew Doughty), but also had a minus-3 rating. Alexander Frolov led all Kings forwards in ice time at 20:56.
Rich Hammond has covered the Kings, on a full-time or part-time basis, since the 2000-01 season. He previously worked at the Los Angeles Daily News, was the beat writer for the entire John Torchetti era and has witnessed Bob Miller singing country music in a Nashville honky-tonk bar.
3 hits lead the team? we’re playing way too soft.
Any reason in particular why Teddy only saw 8 minutes tonight? Was he hurt? Have an off night? Was only able to follow the game via the blog and score updates.
It looks like the Kings were actually 0-6 on the PP but that is very misleading
PP1 1st 3:28-5:28 (2:00)
PP2 3rd 1:27-3:21 (1:54)
PP3 3rd 8:11-8:37 (0:26)
PP4 3rd 9:01-10:11 (1:10)
PP5 3rd 10:37-11:01 (0:24)
PP6 3rd 18:46-19:47 (1:01)
So the Kings ended up 0-6 with 6:55 of actual PP time.
R.E.M
That works both ways…look at the PK numbers and how many were less than 2 minutes.
These things even themselves out.
I thought JW played a pretty good game. His play goes un-noticed, but he does a lot of little things that lead to rushes and scoring chances.
Also, he’s averaging a point a game. We didn’t have a player on the team last year that did that.
The player I’ve been disappointed with is Frolov. I haven’t seen him generate many scoring chances at all.
If the 3rd line is going to score, he needs to be the catalyst. He’s been good with puck possession, but the keep aay games haven’t led to anything worthwhile. Some of it is because his linemates haven’t played that well, but he’s the big guy on that line and he needs to step up his play.
Chris
I think his playing time..as well as Brownies was reduced because of all the penalties that were called on us.
I know the Kings weren’t helping themselves at all, but I’ve played in games in which the refs have made some egregiously bad calls. It can really take the wind out of a team. That call on Stoll was absolutely awful. Even I saw it in full speed. As soo as they called Stoll I was yelling at the ref (cause they can hear me through the TV!) for making such a blatantly wrong call. In typical Kings fashion, a goal was scored only moment later. And of course this was before the PP started so they still got nearly 2 min on that.
Aside from that, what an annoying and terrible game they played. You could tell they were tired from the game the night before. That’s the kind of game we’re going to have to learn to win if we ever want a cup…or you know, the playoffs at all.
How about that kidd0 Drew Doughty??
Refery kill our game (Stole,Kopi).
Frolov in 1st line AASP.Thank you.
The team played a great game in NY and predictably lost to Det. in back to back nights. You have to erase these games from memory becasue thats whats going to happen more often than any of us would like to see.
Zeus had another poor game. He looked lethargic out there. He made 4 or 5 bad passes in a row and his faceoff % is way down. Other than pucks going off his body for a few goals this season I’m not seeing the same player from last year…He’s looking more and more like the player from 2 years ago. Anyone else concerned?
On a brighter note, nice to see the 4th line get more than 5 minutes of ice time and actually make good use of it….They were definitely the energy line tonight!
Tired? It’s only two weeks into the season and their mostly a bunch of young bucks! Tired? They lost two clean face-offs that ledc to goals, so they’re still going to have to work on, if not winning face-offs, not losing them so cleanly.
there was a lot of guys out of the detroit line-up. cleary on the first line says it all. this is a game we should have won. no exceptions. making the “we were tired” excuse won’t fly anymore.
Interesting that all the domination of possession vs. NY led to no goals (during that period of the game) then one chance for NY led to a goal that probably should have been stopped.
From what I heard vs. Det., they have a 1-0 lead and then Ericsson’s goal which could have probably been stopped. We don’t have ‘game breakers’ on this team (maybe Kopi eventually) so if we don’t make saves that have to be made and are still not strong enough on the PK, it’s not gonna help their chances of making the playoffs.
JMTJ… lol
As for the 3 hits leading the team thing, remember that each building has its own statisticians and off ice officials who count these things for both sides. On any given night you can look at an extended box score and see a game with 40 hits and a game with 16 hits, and you can have watched both games and not deemed one as soft and the other as hard hitting. Detroit is a hard team to hit because you have to catch them first
Let’s give this team 20 games before we all decide to start jumping off bridges. The Phoenix game we were totally outplayed and unprepared for their speed. And Phoenix hasn’t just done this to the Kings this season.
I think I’ve seen maybe 3 periods of hockey out of 21 that the team just didn’t play well and 2 of those were last night in Det. You couldn’t say that last season.
I really like the way the team is playing. When you go on a 6 day road trip and you’re playing some of the hottest teams in the league you’re going to hit a few bumps along the way. When you play Detroit in the second of a back to back situation in their building, count on losing 3 of 4 every time. Let the team gel and if they come back going .500 on this trip I think that bodes well for the team and the season.
Off Topic….this kid has major league moves…
watch this 1-on-1
http://www.boston.com/sports/hockey/bruins/extras/bruins_blog/2009/10/the_most_talked.html
We lose only #1 N.Y
#1 PH
and champion R.Wings.
No big problem.
Too many men on the Ice again!
Kopi played like a puss but he wasnt the only one. All in all…
Too soft and too slow.
Kirk Maltby’s goal broke the Kings back. The other day it was the goal by Gaborik that broke the Kings back. In each situation, it was Drew Doughty that was guarding the goal scorer. IN the case of Gaborik, Doughty allowed him to skate inside the left dot and fire away. True it was a soft goal by Ersberg but the shot should never have been fired. Last night, a lacksadaisical play by Doughty allowed Maltby to generate his scoring chance and that put the Kings down by two goals with minutes remaining. I remember he also gave up the puck in the first game and changed the complexing of that game. I understand everyone makes mistakes and maybe this is just my perception, but what bothers me is that I see a non-agressive aloofness. Drew Doughty is part of our future and what I see are mental lapses where he plays too loose and fancy free with what seems to be a “oh well” attitude. Compare that to the way Jack is playing. Jack is playing at a much higher level. I guess what I’d like to see is that when Gaborik enters the zone one-on-one, dont let him shoot. When Maltby steals the puck, smash him into the board. Also disappointing was the reaction of the team when Cleary stuck his leg out and tripped Kopitar, not one King went over to Cleary and sent him a message. That was pathetic.