FINAL – Kings 4, Capitals 2 – Gavrikov, Danault, Copley, McLellan

The LA Kings made it four consecutive victories with a 4-2 win over the Washington Capitals on Monday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

The Kings got two-point nights from Adrian Kempe (1-1-2) and Viktor Arvidsson (0-2-2), while defensemen Mikey Anderson and Vladislav Gavrikov, as well as forward Phillip Danault, scored in the victory. Goaltender Pheonix Copley recorded his 20th victory of the season as he made 20 saves on 22 shots on goal.

Despite a 19-3 advantage in shots on goal, and a 30-5 advantage in shot attempts, the Kings were unable to break through in the first period, as the opening 20 minutes ended 0-0.

Washington opened the scoring midway through the second, through defenseman Rasmus Sandin. After he didn’t connect on the first attempt, Sandin got a poke on the backhand to throw a changeup past Copley and in for his first goal with the Capitals and his fifth goal of the season overall.

The Kings struck back with two goals before the end of the period, however, to open up a 2-1 advantage through 40 minutes.

First, Gavrikov buried his first goal as a member of the Kings organization to knot the score at one. After a nice give-and-go sequence between Arvidsson and forward Kevin Fiala, the latter’s shot was saved by Washington netminder Darcy Kuemper but Gavrikov crashed the net and buried the rebound for his first goal in a Kings jersey. Danault made it 2-1 inside a minute to play in the second period, as he redirected Arvidsson’s shot from the point for his 16th goal of the season.

The Capitals equalized less than three minutes into the third period, with a goal scored on a 5-on-3 to knot the score at two. Up two men, forward Alex Ovechkin fired a one-timer off the stick of Kings defenseman Matt Roy, ramping the puck into the top corner of the net over Copley’s blocker to tie the game at two.

LA pulled back ahead midway through the third period as Anderson buried his third goal of the season. Forward Quinton Byfield used his speed to create space down the left wing before he centered the puck to a driving Anderson, who buried his shot high on the glove side for the go-ahead goal. Byfield extended his point streak to four games with the primary helper on the play.

With just 1.8 seconds on the clock, Kempe iced the game with an empty-net goal, as he reached 30 goals for the second time in as many seasons.

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

Vladislav Gavrikov
On getting his first goal as a member of the LA Kings
Yeah, exactly, but most important is we got the two points. So, no matter who scored the goals, we got two points and that’s important for us as we’re climbing to the finish right now.

On pairing with Matt Roy over the last two games
It’s great, he’s a great partner with his skills. It’s the same as every D here, if we can play with each other, it’s not going to be a problem, but it’s been great to play with him.

On how the players and their families have made him and his family feel welcome
The guys have helped me out, pretty much every day, and the girls have helped [my wife], so that’s pretty huge for us. They’ve just made things easy for us here so we’ve really appreciated that.

Phillip Danault
On his line getting two goals tonight and capitalizing on their looks
Yeah, I think it finished with the empty netter last game and I don’t know if that just released things a little bit, but today we were buzzing. I thought we played the same way, actually, as the last couple of games, we just capitalized today.

On building momentum, game over game, on the current winning streak
It’s good, we want to keep building our game, we know we can get even better and obviously we want to carry that into the playoffs. We want to be a hard team to play against.

On the team’s comfort level in one-goal games in the third period
I think we’ve learned from this year. A couple of times, we were up a couple goals and it’s definitely something we have to work on. Those one-goal leads are very important, we’re going to have a couple to in playoffs, so we’ve got to learn to play with it. We’re going the right way right now.

Pheonix Copley
On getting his 20th win of the season and setting a franchise record in the process
It’s awesome. I care about winning a lot, that’s what I want to do, but it’s a team effort. I’d never take credit individually for anything like that, so that’s about the team, the guys and us as a group.

On any sort of personal satisfaction in being the fastest goal in LAK history to 20 wins
That’s special, but I don’t really think about those things. I haven’t really thought about it, I guess, but that’s special to be able to do something like that. Again, I don’t really put a lot of credit on myself, I put on the team and I take this as a team milestone.

On responding after the Capitals tied the game at two
For myself, it’s just kind of taking it minute-by-minute. There’s highs and lows in games and you just kind of take it as it comes. Again, we responded well as a group and we shut them down and didn’t give them much after that. So, it was a great team effort.

On his relationship with Joonas Korpisalo since he joined the organization
He’s been awesome. He’s been really supportive, really nice and I’ve got nothing but good things to say about him. He’s been great, he’s come in and we’ve gotten along well.

Todd McLellan

McLellan had the following update regarding defenseman Sean Durzi, who left the game in the third period and didn’t return – “He had to go in and get evaluated, the evaluation takes a certain amount of time and the clock ran out. I saw him in there, he seems to be feeling good, we’ll see how he is in the morning, I think he’ll be okay.”

Notes –
– Pheonix Copley stopped 20-of-22 shots to record his 20th victory of the season, becoming the fastest goaltender in Kings history to reach the 20-win mark in a single season, requiring only 29 appearances (Previous – Jonathan Quick, 30 GP).
– Vladislav Gavrikov scored his first goal as a King and his fourth goal of the season overall. Gavrikov is the first Russian-born player to score a goal for the Kings since Nikolai Prohorkin (Dec. 2, 2019 at ANA).
– Adrian Kempe (1-1-2) netted his 30th goal of the season to earn his second consecutive 30-goal season (35G in 78 GP in 2021-22), marking the 15th different skater in franchise history to record consecutive 30-goal seasons and the first since Ziggy Palffy (2000-01, 2001-02, 2002-03).
– Quinton Byfield extended his point and assist streaks to career-longs of four games (0-4-4) with the primary helper on the game-winning goal.
– Matt Roy extended his assist and point streak into a third game (0-3-3). His assist marked his 22nd point of the season (9-13=22), establishing a new, single-season career-high.
– Kevin Fiala collected his 45th assist of the season, becoming the sixth skater to register 45+ assists in his first season with the Kings: Wayne Gretzky (114 in 1988-89), Larry Murphy (60 in 1980-81), Jozef Stumpel (58 in 1997-98), Jason Allison (55 in 2001-02) and Marcel Dionne (54 in 1975-76).
– Mikey Anderson registered his third goal of the year, setting a new single-season career high.
– Zack MacEwen made his LA Kings debut tonight, recording one blocked shot, two hits and one takeaway in 5:52 minutes of time-on-ice.

The Kings have a scheduled team off day tomorrow. The group will reconvene for practice on Wednesday morning at 10:30 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center, before departing for Colorado later in the day.