Waking up with the Kings: November 9

It sometimes becomes vogue on this blog, admittedly, to reference variables in travel and the 82-game schedule that don’t stack up in the team’s favor; losing hours when traveling east for a back-to-back would probably be the chief grievance. But through no decision of the schedule-makers, the Los Angeles Kings received a bit of a pass from something that happened at the Air Canada Centre over the weekend: Toronto, following an emotional and at times ugly fight-filled win against another Canadian team, was probably due for a little bit of a letdown against a western non-rival in their following game. I’m not a sports psychologist – I was a theater major, which hardly gives me the ability to comment authoritatively on anything – but I have watched enough college sports to know that young teams appear, perhaps anecdotally, more prone to emotional highs and lows, and hey, Toronto’s top four scorers included two teenagers and a 20-year-old. Against a more experienced team, that wasn’t exactly a Gretzky-to-Kurri set-up for the Maple Leafs. The Kings, in their first game of their first extended road trip of the season, weathered an even, ho-hum seven or eight minutes to open the game before overwhelmingly carrying their scoring chance advantage from the Calgary game into the Toronto game, and after kicking a late extra point ended the night with a resounding win that should probably serve as the season’s most noncompetitive boat race.

Goals weren’t scored exclusively as the extension of scoring chances. Looking back at the seven goals scored, there were probably three or four – namely, Brown’s, Carter’s second, and Clifford’s – that were probably at best B-minus-type chances. By LAKI Associate Bo Hamby’s count, Los Angeles’ chances outnumbered Toronto’s 14-5, and it’s not necessarily the 14 as much as the 5 that was impressive. The Maple Leafs simply didn’t have much time with the puck in the offensive zone, other than a sullied chance when a puck got past Jake Gardiner in the first period and several dangerous shifts by Auston Matthews’ line in the second that drew polite applause after they concluded. It’s always interesting in Toronto, one of the most knowledgeable crowds in the league, which plays draw the most pronounced crowd reactions. Drew Doughty makes a nice move in the first period before attempting a deft centering feed from behind the net: gasp. Doughty activates to create a decent shorthanded chance: gasp. Dustin Brown’s shot from the top of the circle that opened the scoring: gasp. The announcement that there was one minute remaining in regulation: applause. In a 7-0 game, I don’t think I heard any booing.

Jeff Carter was the best skater on the ice, and that’s not only a reflection of the two goals he scored. He backchecked to break up two key Toronto rushes over the first half of the game and, in the scant time he was actually forced to defend, had his sticks on pucks and didn’t allow much over the center of the ice. Matt Greene and Dwight King also used their size against a smaller team in the second period to win battles while advancing the puck from the Kings’ end through the neutral zone and to Carter for the center’s first goal of the night. Also, it’s unrelated, but Los Angeles received some dividends from players who were based in Ontario last season. Obviously Peter Budaj has had an impact in the club’s ability to regain its footing in net, and Nic Dowd has emerged, along with Dustin Brown and Devin Setoguchi, as an important cog in a so-called third line that has the potential to raise the scoring from third lines of the previous two seasons and shoulder some of the burden from Kopitar and Carter’s lines. But Derek Forbort had a three-assist night (!) and was a plus-three, and Kevin Gravel, who hasn’t shown much hesitation in using his skating to jump up in the play, continues to look like a player capable of playing at an NHL pace, much like he showed for most of his five-game stint last season.