FINAL – Kings 2, Bruins 4 – Kopitar, Laferriere, McLellan

The LA Kings fell to 2-2-1 on the season after a 4-2 defeat against the Boston Bruins on Saturday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

After the Kings were unsuccessful on an early 5-on-3 man advantage, Boston capitalized on a power play of their own to bury the game’s first goal. Off a won faceoff in the offensive zone, the puck fell to forward David Pastrnak at the top of the left hand circle, with his shot deflecting off of a Kings stick and in for his team-leading fifth goal of the season and a 1-0 lead.

Midway through the second period, the Kings tied the game at one through forward Alex Laferriere, who scored his first career NHL goal. Forward Pierre-Luc Dubois fed Laferriere on a breakaway, with the Harvard product avoiding pressure from a backchecker before he fired past Boston netminder Jeremy Swayman on the blocker side for the goal. Dubois and forward Kevin Fiala collected assists on the play, Fiala’s team-leading seventh of the season.

Boston scored twice in the second period, however, to take a 3-1 lead after 40 minutes.

First, the Bruins pulled ahead through forward Morgan Geekie, who got on the end of a Milan Lucic rebound to slot past Kings netminder Cam Talbot for his first goal of the season. Later in the middle stanza, Boston made it a two-goal lead through forward Brad Marchand, who saw his shot deflect off a Kings skate and through Talbot’s legs for the goal, bringing us to the 3-1 scoreline at the second intermission.

Marchand added a second goal late in the third period to ice the game, with just over two minutes remaining, to put the visitors ahead 4-1. Marchand’s tally gave him a three-point night, in addition to David Pastrnak, who collected the primary assist.

The Kings pulled back a late goal through forward Carl Grundstrom, bringing us to the final score of 4-2. Grundstrom’s goal came on a late power play, as he deflected a shot from the point by defenseman Matt Roy, past Swayman and in for his third goal of the season.

Hear from Laferriere, forward Anze Kopitar and Head Coach Todd McLellan after tonight’s game.

Anze Kopitar

Kopitar reflects on being the longest tenured King@LAKings | #KingsLive pic.twitter.com/Tdhtk4jKV1

— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) October 22, 2023

Alex Laferriere
On his first career NHL goal
Yeah, it was just an unbelievable play by my linemates. Kevin made a great pass to PL and then PL found me right up the middle. Got a bounce and it went post and in. It felt pretty really relieving, but definitely a good play by them.

On the team’s start to the season at home
As a group, we had a lot more to give in that game, so a little disappointing. I think the focus was ‘this is our house’ and we have won here yet, so we want to make it difficult for teams to come in here and play us and we haven’t done that yet, so we’ve got to focus on that now.

On who gets the puck from his first career NHL goal
Me for right now, but I think I’ll probably give it to my mom or my dad when they come into town. My dad was a Bruins fan growing up, so it was a pretty special moment to get it against them.

On creating chances throughout the start to the season and finally getting one to go
Yeah, I think so, it’s definitely relieving. I definitely felt a little pressure on myself, especially because I want my linemates to reap the rewards of finding me in the slot. It’s good to get that first one.

Todd McLellan
On what he felt was the difference in tonight’s game
The white team I thought had an intensity in and around their paint that the black team didn’t have. I thought that the white team was more detailed, obviously in faceoff-type situations, not necessarily the wins and losses, but the execution on what was happening after it. We gave up a goal on it, we gave up a scoring chance 10 seconds into the game. The black team didn’t capitalize on the chances that they had, because they did have some, especially early in the game, and the white team did.

On wanting to re-establish an advantage at home, after dropping the first three in LA
Well, we really want to re-establish that, but we’ve had the President’s Trophy team come in tonight, we’ve had the other two division champions come in and we ended up having three nights, where we got a point out of [one]. We talked about needing measuring tools and measuring sticks, those are three teams that you have to beat, especially on home ice, at some point. When I look at how we lost those games, we gave up two shorties, we lacked details on faceoffs, our net play, we gave up 13 goals against those three teams in our building. I think we have a pretty good path right now as a team of where we need to go and what we need to work on, and we can get there. I really believe we can, but we now have some direction and that’s not a bad thing to have.

On the early 5-on-3 power play and if he felt that was a missed opportunity to set the tone early
Well, I thought we did set the tone, we were dangerous, we had some good looks, some scoring chances, it didn’t go in. I don’t think that there was a big fall off in the level of our play after that, we just didn’t get rewarded for it. I thought our power play sucked the life out of us a little more in the second period than it did later on in the game and then the grinders got to go out and they scored one, so good for them.

On Adrian Kempe and Kevin Fiala having one goal combined through the first five games
Kev, tonight, didn’t attempt a shot, at least on the scoresheet and that can be wrong often, but he’s got a tremendous shot. He’s making some real good offensive plays, setting up other people, and that’s real good but he’s got a shot and he’s got to use it. Juice has had the shot attempts, a couple off his stick, couple wobbly pucks tonight, he hasn’t had anything real clean, but we aren’t short on offense most nights. So, I don’t think that’s killing us, it’s that we’re a little short on the defending part and that’s where it’s hurting is.

On Alex Laferriere’s play, both tonight and through the first five games
He continues to show that he belongs at this level and he’s not afraid to shoot the puck, we know that already, after two games we were aware of that. He used his legs and his shot to score. Now, it’ll be a bit of a test because he’s been around for five games and the excitement and all that enthusiasm, the first goal, the first game, it normalizes a little bit for players and now you have to keep going. I don’t want to say it becomes work, because this is great work for all of us, but you have to be able to keep playing and bring that energy and that excitement over and over again. I think he can do that.

On the team’s decision to mix up the defensive pairings throughout the game
Yawns is working the back end and he feels comfortable using them as he feels fit. There’s different types of matchups, physicality and size, that’s needed at any given time and I think you’ll see that throughout the year happen.

On three straight starts for Cam Talbot and if he feels he is starting to take on the number-one role
We’ll see how it goes. We’ve only seen Phoenix for one game. You guys are asking me questions after five, we haven’t won a home game yet. So, to say hey, Cam Talbot’s our guy, let’s go, we haven’t won a home game yet. I can’t tell you who our number one line is, who our top pair is right now, until we get on a roll and really start rolling out wins. If we can get to that, then I can answer that question.

*McLellan also confirmed that Copley will play at least one of the three games next week

Notes –
– Anze Kopitar skated in his 1,297th game as a member of the Kings, surpassing Dustin Brown (1,296) for the King’s franchise record of most games played. Tonight’s contest also marked Kopitar’s 650th home game, tying Brown for the most home games played in club history.
– Among active skaters, only Ryan Suter (1,365), Alex Ovechkin (1,350) and Brent Burns (1,338) have played more games in the NHL. Per NHL PR, among franchises that have been in the League for at least 10 seasons, only two have a current member of their club as the franchise leader in games played, besides the Kings: Washington (Alex Ovechkin) and Pittsburgh (Sidney Crosby, 1,194).
– Currently, only six of 32 franchises – including the League’s two newest clubs – have a career games played leader who was born outside North America: Minnesota (Mikko Koivu; Turku, Finland), Chicago (Stan Mikita; Sokolce, Slovakia), Seattle (Adam Larsson; Skelleftea, Sweden), Vancouver (Henrik Sedin; Ornskoldsvik, Sweden), Vegas (William Karlsson; Marsta, Sweden) and Washington (Alex Ovechkin; Moscow, Russia).
– Alex Laferriere (1-0=1) scored his first career NHL goal, becoming the 11th different skater in Kings history to score their first career goal against the Bruins and first since defenseman Kevin Gravel (Feb. 23, 2017).
– Carl Grundstrom (1-0=1) scored his third goal of the season. It is the first time in Grundstrom’s career he has scored three or more goals within a team’s first five games of the season.
– Pierre-Luc Dubois (0-1=1) recorded his first assist of the season to extend his point streak to three games (3-1-4). It is his 306th point (132-174=306), two points shy from tying teammate Phillip Danault (101-207=308) for the sixth most points among active Quebec-born skaters.
– Kevin Fiala (0-1=1) tallied his seventh assist of the season, extending his point and assist streak to four games (0-7=7). His seven assists are tied for second-most in the league and sit one behind Vancouver’s Elias Pettersson (8) for the league lead.
– Drew Doughty skated in his 1,100th career NHL game. In doing so, he became the fourth player and first defenseman to play as many contests with the Kings, after Brown, Kopitar and Dave Taylor (1,111). He is just the seventh active blueliner to reach the 1,100-game mark. Doughty also surpassed Borje Salming (1,099) on the NHL’s all-time list for games played with one franchise among defensemen and become the 12th blueliner in League history to hit the milestone with one club (the first since Marc-Edouard Vlasic did so with the San Jose Sharks on Nov. 26, 2021).

The Kings will not practice tomorrow and will return to the ice for practice on Monday, October 23 at 11 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center in El Segundo.

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