FINAL – Kings 6, Penguins 0 – Copley, Kempe, McLellan

The LA Kings came out of the break in a big way, with a convincing, 6-0 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

Forward Adrian Kempe scored a career-high four goals in the victory, while goaltender Pheonix Copley posted his first shutout in a Kings jersey with 25 saves between the pipes. Forward Anze Kopitar posted a three-point night (0-3-3) while forwards Jaret Anderson-Dolan and Alex Iafallo also scored in the win.

The Kings got the scoring started in the opening period, as Anderson-Dolan buried his seventh goal of the season less than three minutes into the game. Stationed at the left point, defenseman Alex Edler sent a shot towards the net, which deflected off of Anderson-Dolan on the way through for the game’s first goal.

The Kings doubled their advantage late in the opening period to take a 2-0 lead into the first intermission. Off of an extended shift in the offensive zone, plays made by Rasmus Kupari and Kevin Fiala worked the puck to Iafallo just outside the top of the crease, where he buried past Pittsburgh netminder Casey DeSmith.

Kempe took over the game in the second period, as he posted a natural hat trick to turn a 2-0 advantage into a five-goal lead in the span of 14:25.

First, Kempe was stationed in the slot when Kopitar collected a rebound and fed him for a quick release and the 3-0 advantage. Kempe made it 4-0 just over three minutes later as he took another pass from Kopitar, this time off the rush, and made no mistake from the low slot to bury his second goal of the evening. The Swede completed the hat trick with just over five minutes to play in the middle stanza, as he converted on his team’s first power play of the evening for his 25th goal of the season and third of the night.

After more than 15 minutes elapsed in the third period without a goal, Kempe buried his fourth of the evening to extend the advantage for the hosts to six goals. With the Kings on the man advantage, Kempe wired home a one-timer from the right-hand circle for a career high in goals. Forward Kevin Fiala and defenseman Drew Doughty tallied the assists, the second helper of the game for both players.

Hear from Kempe, Copley and Head Coach Todd McLellan following tonight’s win.

Pheonix Copley

Adrian Kempe
On a big performance coming out of the All-Star break
Getting the conditioning and stuff like that back, I don’t think I speak for only myself tonight that we didn’t feel great in first, second or third period, but I think as a team we kept it simple. We kept our shifts short and I think that helped us along the way. Having a special night for Brownie tonight, obviously everyone wanted to win extra for him and I think we did a good job with showing up tonight.

On if getting four goals is something that’s important to him individually
No, not really. I mean, it’s pretty cool I guess, but it’s not anything that I think about. It was just one of those nights when the puck just keeps coming to you and I think I had chances to score five or six. It was just one of those nights.

On being the “extension” from past eras of success to the next wave
Yeah, for sure. Seeing what Brownie did for so long and Kopi, all these guys on the team, when the cup comes out, you do get kind of jealous, that’s a goal that we all want to get to and obviously it’s the toughest goal to get to. I think as a team, over the last few years, we’re getting better and better and I think we’re starting to show that we can beat the best teams in the league. That’s something we’ve got to carry on through the season until the playoffs would start.

On increased expectations this season for him and the team
Yeah, I mean, obviously expectations go up after last year, not just for myself but as a team. I think we’ve been getting better and better throughout the year and so have I as well. We’ve got to keep this going for sure, for the last 28 games and then the final thing starts and that’s where you’ve got to be good. I mean, obviously, it’s important to keep my scoring up as much as I can, but the team is playing well right now so that’s a good thing.

Todd McLellan
On the win tonight coming out of the break
I think that after watching the Dustin Brown ceremony and having the Stanley Cup come out, that puts a little – if you didn’t have a spark to play already, it put a little more into the game. The guys played well. They were rested, they were fresh, they executed well, did some of the things that we didn’t do in Pittsburgh, we got drilled 6-1 there. We had to fix a lot of things to play against a real good team. You never know how this game is going to go. I watched some of the other teams that finished their play and then started late – Buffalo, Calgary for example – we’re going to play Buffalo and we know how good a team they are. You never know how it’s going to go, it went our way tonight. I was a little bit concerned about the Brownie event, obviously he deserves every minute of everything he got, but you wondered how it would affect the team. I think we got a push from that rather than a roadblock if you will.

On if he feels Adrian Kempe is raising his level of play right now
If I say no, that’s probably going to be looked at as giving him a shot, but I think he does these things quite consistently. There’s nights when it doesn’t go in for him, right now it is going in, but he plays physically, penalty kills, he’s blocking the shots, he’s skating, he’s responsible defensively. He’s leading, you can hear him talking on the bench and saying the right things. All of that is happening when he’s not scoring. So, I don’t want to say no, because it doesn’t look like I appreciate what he’s doing, but he’s done it.

On the team “learning its lesson” from the last break between games
Well, some of that is sometimes the way the dummies with the whistle approach things too. Maybe we didn’t work them the right way after that break. We tried something different this time and I don’t know if that was the answer or not, but we have to accept some of the responsibility for that as a coaching staff. It sounds like the players felt good tonight. They got their timing and rhythm back quickly. We were able to roll four lines, I think that helped, and playing with the lead also helped. Getting that first one, those first two, was really important.

On closing out the game in the third period and playing better with a lead
We talked about that between the second and third. We’ve done a lot of good things, improving our game, but one thing we wanted to do was play better with the lead. I think some references were made at our press meeting over the last couple of days about closing games out, we hadn’t done a real good job of that on the back end of that road trip. A little bit different circumstances tonight, they played back to back, we were fresh, so we did the right things.

On hitting the stretch run and his feelings about potentially adding a player
Well, there’s two parts to that question. One, it is the stretch run. We’re down to 28 now and 28 games goes by very quick. You break it down two days, there’s probably 60 days left to play those games. It’s going to go fast, it’s going to be critical that we perform at our best every night and even some nights that won’t be good enough to get wins, but we have to be pushing that way. We like what’s in our locker room right now. When it comes to the trade deadline, we’re comfortable with the players we have. Would we love to bring in four or five superstars, we would, but it doesn’t happen that way. Rob and his staff have a job to do, they’re always looking for ways to make the team better. If our team adds a player, great, if it doesn’t, we feel really good about what we have.

Notes –
– Adrian Kempe (4-0-4) recorded his first career natural hat trick and first career four-goal game, extending his team-leading goal total to 26. The last Kings skater to record a natural hat trick was Jeff Carter, on March 4, 2013 vs. Nashville. The last Kings skater to record a four-goal game was Dustin Brown on April 5, 2018 vs. Minnesota.
– Pheonix Copley stopped all 25 shots he faced for his first shutout as an LA King and second of his NHL career. Tonight also marked his 16th victory of the season to tie his career-high from the 2018-19 season with the Washington Capitals.
– Anze Kopitar (0-3-3) tallied three assists for his second, three-point performance in as many games (1-2-3 on Jan. 31 at CAR). It marks his 13th multi-point game of the season and the 70th, three-plus point game of his career. Only five skaters in Kings history have accomplished such a feat at least 70 times: Marcel Dionne (153), Wayne Gretzky (129), Luc Robitaille (108), Dave Taylor (83) and Bernie Nicholls (75).
– Kopitar eclipsed the 30-assist mark this season, joining teammates Kevin Fiala (36) and Drew Doughty (31) as the only skaters on the team with 30+ assists. Kopitar has recorded at least 30 assists in each of his 17 NHL seasons.
– Rasmus Kupari (0-2-2) recorded his first career multi-assist game and first multi-point effort since October 30th, 2021 vs. Montreal (1-1-2).
– Drew Doughty (0-2-2) and Kevin Fiala (0-2-2) registered multi-assist nights. Doughty extended his assist streak to a third game (0-5-5) while Fiala has points in each of his last three outings (1-4-5).
– Jaret Anderson-Dolan scored his seventh goal of the season, extending his point streak to a career-long three games (2-1-3). With his goal, Anderson-Dolan tied his career-high point total of 11 previously set in the 2020-21 season (7-4-11).
– Viktor Arvidsson skated in his 500th career NHL game tonight, becoming the seventh skater from the 2014 NHL Draft class and 28th active Swedish-born skater to reach such mark.
– Todd McLellan won his 557th career game as an NHL head coach tonight, surpassing Marc Crawford for the 23rd-most wins by a head coach in league history. It also marked his 123rd victory behind the Kings bench, surpassing Larry Robinson for fifth-most in franchise history.

The Kings are scheduled to practice tomorrow morning at 11 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center.