The LA Kings picked up their first point of the season, but ultimately fell in a nine-round shootout, by a 6-5 final score, against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday evening at Crypto.com Arena.
Carolina opened the scoring with the first three goals of the game, all coming within the first 14 minutes of the first period.
First, defenseman Brent Burns opened the scoring as he walked in from the right point and fired clean past Kings netminder Pheonix Copley from the right-hand circle for the game’s first goal. Just shy of three minutes later, forward Sebastian Aho made it 2-0, as he pickpocketed Kevin Fiala in the neutral zone, went the length of the ice and scored on the backhand, a shorthanded goal. Forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi made it 3-0 with a sharp-angle shot, extending the lead for the visitors.
Kings defenseman Drew Doughty got his team on the board late in the first period, bringing the score to 3-1 heading into the first intermission. After the Kings won the puck back in the offensive zone, forward Kevin Fiala fed Doughty across the tops of the circles, with the blueliner collecting and firing off a Carolina skate and in, Doughty’s first goal of the season.
Early in the second period, Carolina re-took its three-goal advantage through former Kings forward Brendan Lemieux. In the midst of a line change, Lemieux took a cross-ice feed down the left wing, moved into the left-hand circle and beat Copley high on the short side for his first goal of the season.
Skating on the man advantage, the Kings pulled a goal back, their first power-play goal of the season. Forward Adrian Kempe collected the puck from Fiala, spun in the right-hand circle and hit forward Anze Kopitar at the back post for a tap-in goal, his first of the season. The secondary assist made it a multi-point game for Fiala, his first two points of the season.
Shortly after the second Kings goal, the Hurricanes scored their second shorthanded goal of the evening to pull ahead 5-2. Off a failed zone entry for the Kings, Aho and forward Teuvo Teravainen led a 2-on-1 rush the other way, with the former feeding for latter for his second goal in as many games and a three-goal advantage.
Late in the middle stanza, the Kings converted again on the power play, as forward Trevor Moore opened his account for the season. With the second unit starting the man advantage, defenseman Jordan Spence worked the puck to Moore in the slot, where the California native fired with a quick release, past Carolina netminder Frederik Andersen, for his first goal of the year and the team’s second power-play goal of the night.
Midway through the third period, defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov scored his first goal of the season to bring the Kings to within a one. Forward Blake Lizotte sent a spinning effort towards the front of the net, which deflected off the skate of forward Trevor Lewis, to a charging Gavrikov, who buried to make it 5-4.
Inside two minutes to play, Kopitar sent the game to overtime with his second goal of the evening. With the goaltender pulled for an extra attacker, Fiala fed forward Carl Grundstrom off the bench, who hit Kopitar at the back post for a slam-dunk goal, tying the game at five, with Kopitar collecting a multi-goal game in the process.
After a 3-on-3 overtime session that saw neither team score, and shootout that went eight rounds without a winner, the Hurricanes finally ended things in Round 9, through forward Jordan Martinook.
Hear from Kopitar, Moore and Head Coach Todd McLellan following tonight’s game.
Trevor Moore
Trevor Moore speaks with media 🔉@LAKings I #LAKingsLive pic.twitter.com/MIVP9Xs4y2
— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) October 15, 2023
Anze Kopitar
On his takeaways from the third period tonight and what led to the comeback
I didn’t really think the whole game was necessarily bad. I mean, yes, the third period, you’re down two, so you’re going to be pressing, but I thought we were dictating the play throughout the night. It’s just those you know costly mistakes, obviously giving up two shorties, one on a line change, it just can’t happen. At the end of the day, it’s six goals against and it’ll happen every once in a while, but now we’ve given up five and six in the first two games, so that number has got to go down.
On his thoughts from the performance tonight on special teams
It’s bittersweet. You don’t need the power play to necessarily win you games all the time, but it certainly can’t lose it. It was obviously good to see that we got two on the power play, I guess that kind of evened it up, but two shorties is unacceptable.
On the defensive effort, and if he felt there was a turning point in that area later in the game
It was some uncharacteristic mistakes. Talking the shorties again, that certainly can’t happen, and then the line change goal, which hurt us in the end. Obviously a good thing to see that you turn it up or lock it down, whatever you want to call it and come back and at least get the one point.
On what the focus is with fixing things moving forward
Yeah, you just tighten it up. I mean, it’s not too hard, I’d say. It’s some mistakes that shouldn’t happen and won’t happen in order for us to win the game.
Todd McLellan
On if tonight was a good point earned, or a bad point lost
It’s a very good point we earned, it’s a bad point we gave away. I think the resilience of the group coming back and not quitting and actually playing, for the most part, a pretty good game. The brain cramps – I can’t use the words I’d like to use – and the individual errors were very costly for the group as a whole and those have to get cleaned up. There’s some guys that need to get sharp.
On what he felt turned the game around once it got to 5-2
I thought our penalty kill did a good job. There was some momentum gained off of doing a good job and we didn’t have to kill many, but if it gets away on us any further, we’re in trouble. I thought that Lizzo’s line did a real good job of energizing the group again. We can talk about Copper maybe wanting to have a save back, but he stopped, when Kev turned the puck over again for another shorthanded breakaway, that was a big moment as well.
On if three assists, but those turnovers is the risk/reward you live with Kevin Fiala
No, we’ll take the three assists, but we’re not going to do that other stuff. Kev has had some really good games for us. Yeah, he had three assists tonight, but tonight was not one of his good games for us……He’s a risk and reward player, we allow him to play with some risk, he’s dynamic. He can clean this up quickly and he will.
On his evaluation of the special teams tonight
I would say that the shorthanded goals were, again, I think more individual than group, system or structure, unfortunately. But, to score two, pull your goalie and get another one, against Carolina who’s notoriously very stingy with penalty-kill situations, we’ll take that tonight.
On where he sees things standing, positively and negatively, through two games
We held this team to 19 shots on goal and that rarely happens to Carolina. We did a pretty good job against Colorado, yet we gave up [11] goals in two games and that’s not good, so what’s happening, where are they coming from? We’ll start in the crease, we’ve got to get better in that area. Our back end wasn’t real strong against Colorado, it was better tonight. Our special teams gave up to on the power play tonight that’s not good, so it’s happening from all over the place. We will score enough goals to win games, I believe we will. It’s the tightening up of certain areas of our game and tonight I point at individuals, I don’t think our team was bad, I think some individuals were sloppy.
Additionally, Kings General Manager Rob Blake shared on the Bally Sports West broadcast that forward Viktor Arvidsson will have surgery on his back and is currently considered “month-to-month”.
McLellan had the following to add after tonight’s game –
“I think there’s potential for this week coming up and he’ll have some surgery, he’ll be out for a long time, I can’t give you a date obviously or anything like that. He’s on LTIR and that’s opened up some cap space and some roster opportunities for players that are anxious to get them. JAD was one of them and he had a real good night tonight.”
Notes –
– Anze Kopitar (2-0-2) scored his first two goals of the season, marking his 284th career multi-point game to tie Wayne Gretzky for the third-most multi-point games in franchise history. With his two goals, Kopitar (395) now sits five shy of 400 in his career.
– Tonight also marked Kopitar’s 649th career home game, pulling one behind of Dustin Brown (650) for most all-time in Kings history. He also sits at 1,294 career games played, two shy Brown (1,296) for most all-time in franchise history.
– Drew Doughty (1-0-1) recorded his first goal of the season for his second career goal against the Hurricanes. It is the sixth time in Doughty’s career he has scored his first goal of a campaign within the team’s first two games of a season, the most two-game spans of the sort in franchise history.
– Trevor Moore (1-0-1) notched his first goal of the season and first of his career against Carolina.
– Vladislav Gavrikov (1-0-1) tallied his first goal of the season.
– Kevin Fiala (0-3-3) recorded three assists for his 50th, 51st and 52nd career assists as a member of the Kings in his just his 71st game with the franchise. In doing so, he became the sixth skater to tally at least 50 assists within his first 71 games an LA King. It is Fiala’s 23rd multi-point performance of his Kings career after his 22 multi-point efforts last season which co-led the team with Anze Kopitar.
– Adrian Kempe (0-1-1) assisted on Anze Kopitar’s second period power-play goal for 254th career point (117-137=254), tying Tomas Sandstrom (131-123-254) for the second-most points by a Swedish-born player in Kings franchise history.
– Mikey Anderson (0-1-1) Carl Grundstrom (0-1-1), Trevor Lewis (0-1-1) and Blake Lizotte (0-1-1) all collected assists.
The Kings have a scheduled team off day tomorrow and will return to the ice for practice on Monday morning at 10 AM.
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