FINAL – Kings 5, Blackhawks 0 – Dubois, Spence, Hiller

The LA Kings picked up their first victory of the roadtrip, a 5-0 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday evening at United Center.

The Kings opened the scoring on an early man advantage, as they snapped a five-game scoreless drought in power-play situations. Forward Phillip Danault fed defenseman Jordan Spence at the center point, with Spence firing wide of the net, but the rebound kicked directly to forward Pierre-Luc Dubois, which he buried from a sharp angle to the left of the Chicago net for an early lead on the road.

Just over two minutes later, the Kings doubled their advantage through forward Alex Laferriere. Dubois was again involved, as he feathered a pass through the slot to defenseman Matt Roy at the right point. Roy shot towards the goal and Laferriere got a deflection on the way through, with the puck evading Blackhawks goaltender Arvid Soderblom for his tenth goal of the season.

Forward Anze Kopitar doubled the advantage with his team’s third and fourth goals of the game, bringing the score to 4-0 after 20 minutes of play.

First, Kopitar and forward Quinton Byfield combined on a nice passing play in the offensive zone. Byfield worked his way into the slot, looked off the Chicago defensive crew and fed Kopitar at the bottom of the right-hand circle, where he buried into a gaping net for a 3-0 advantage. The duo combined again towards the end of the period, as Byfield threaded a backhanded pass through traffic to Kopitar at the back post, where he scored his 20th goal of the season, setting a new franchise record with his 13th career 20-goal season.

The third line got the scoring started in the second period as well, with defenseman Jordan Spence activating from the right point to put the Kings ahead by five. Working along the wall, Laferriere deflected a puck to Spence, moving in from the right wall, and the Australia native banked a shot off the side of replacement Blackhawks goaltender Petr Mrazek and in, to open his tally on the season.

Hear from Dubois, Spence and Head Coach Jim Hiller following tonight’s win.

Pierre-Luc Dubois

Jordan Spence
On getting his first goal of the season
Yeah, it was. Every game I go in, it’s just always in the back of my head, trying to score but obviously getting that one out of the way, it feels really good and obviously the boys were pretty happy about it too.

On if it feels like a weight off his shoulders to get that out of the way
Yeah, for sure. Going from now on, I’m not as stressed anymore, getting the first one out of the way, but at the end of the day, we’re trying to make playoffs and we’re trying to get the two points. So, in order for me to do that, I think I just have to keep doing my job and try to contribute as much as I can.

On getting a power-play goal tonight off a direct play
Yeah, I think he preaches a lot about us, from the point, just shooting it from the point and that’s just been our main goal. When Phil passed me that puck, my main objective was trying to hit the net and see where it goes and then Duber was there to finish it. You just have to keep it simple and obviously good things will happen in front of the net.

On the Kings finally getting a win that didn’t come down to the wire
Going into the game, we can’t really focus on who we’re playing against. I think our main thing is we just have to play our game. That’s what we were trying to do today and I think we did that pretty well. We have a big one tomorrow against Dallas and they’re a really good team. We just have to be ready to go from the get go.

Jim Hiller
On getting a convincing win that came with a lot “less stress”
I’m going to tell you this, it’s always high stress. It’s always high stress when you’re standing back there. You know what, it was great to get off to the lead, but what we saw was Talbs had ti make two or three big saves early, it could have been a different game. So, credit the goalie there, nice to see the puck go in for us. We had a lot of good chances in St. Louis, so we wanted to play the same offensive game and just clean up a couple of mistakes. It was nice to see the puck go in for us.

On seeing more direct play on the power play than in past games
Yeah, we missed the net, we were in good spots to get it back. I thought the second power play though, you saw in the second period, Kopi’s group, they really had four or five shots, four or five really good looks at least, they were putting the puck to the net. Sometimes it’s a balance. You need to get yourself going again and hopefully that’s the one that will get us going.

On the overall gameflow tonight
The point was, our goalie had to make three or four really good saves, that would have changed everything. It was nice to see us score, we scored some nice goals too. Tough goals for the goalie, there was some nice passing there. We haven’t scored a lot, we haven’t had a lead like that, so I thought we did a pretty good job once we got into the intermission, second and third, of not giving them too much.

On seeing Jordan Spence get his first of the season
It was, he’s had his looks, I guess he gets a goal and an assist, because the shot he missed the net, he gets the assist. [It was a] funny one but it was good. T I thought Turc scored it, Turc was on the goalie, so he made it a little bit harder for him to see. Seeing-eye shot, never hurts to throw it at the net, especially when you have traffic.

On the energy and impact that the Dubois line brought tonight
I thought they were really good. They didn’t turn the puck over in the neutral zone and they were really good in the o-zone. That’s where I thought their strength was. They beat people off the wall, they were at the net and they were just hard to contain in the o-zone. When you do that, you’re going to end up creating some chances, so that was really good to see from that line.

Notes –
– Anze Kopitar (2-0=2) scored his 19th and 20th goals of the season for his second multi-goal game of the campaign. With his pair of goals, Kopitar has reached the 20-goal mark for the 13th time in his career, breaking a tie with Luc Robitaille (12), Dave Taylor (12) and Marcel Dionne (12) for the most such seasons in franchise history. Entering tonight, only eight other active players have as many seasons with 20 goals or more: Alex Ovechkin (18), Sidney Crosby (16), Patrick Kane (15), John Tavares (14), Steven Stamkos (14), Evgeni Malkin (14), Joe Pavelski (14) and Brad Marchand (13).
– Kopitar is also the 12th European-born skater in league history to record 13 or more 20-goal seasons. With his pair of goals, Kopitar has recorded 1,196 (413-785=1,196) points in his career, one point shy of tying Patrick Marleau (566-631=1,197) for 52nd all-time, and four points shy from becoming the second skater in Kings history to hit the 1,200-career point mark (Marcel Dionne; 550-757=1,307). Kopitar’s two-goal outing marked the 46th multi-goal game of his career, passing Wayne Gretzky (45) for sole possession of fifth-most in franchise history.
– Pierre-Luc Dubois (1-1=2) scored in his 500th career game, becoming the 12th different player to do so with the Kings and the first since Trevor Lewis on March 29, 2017. Dubois becomes the fifth Kings skater to record a multi-point effort in his 500th career game, and the first to do so since Adam Deadmarsh (1-1=2) on Dec. 20, 2001. Dubois has now tallied six points (4-2=6) over his last five games against Chicago, dating back to Nov. 5, 2022.
– Alex Laferriere (1-1=2) scored his 10th goal of the season and added an assist for his 20th and 21st points (10-11=21) of the campaign, becoming the first Kings skater to record at least 10 goals and 20 points in his debut season since Austin Wagner (12-9=21) in 2018-19. Laferriere’s pair of points marks his second multi-point effort of the year, becoming the first Kings skater since Sean Durzi (5, 2021-22) to record multiple multi-point games in their debut season and the first forward to do so since Gabriel Vilardi (2, 2019-20).
– Jordan Spence (1-1=2) scored his first goal of the season and picked up his 18th assist of the season for his second multi-point effort of the campaign. The assist was the 25th helper of Spence’s career, becoming the fifth defenseman selected in the 2019 NHL Draft to reach the quarter-century mark.
– Matt Roy (0-1=1) picked up his 18th assist of the season for the 80th assist of his career, becoming the fifth American-born defenseman in Kings history to record at least 80 helpers with the franchise. With the assist, Roy moves one shy of matching his single season career high (19A, 2021-22).
– Adrian Kempe (0-2=2) notched his 33rd and 34th assists of the season, extending his point streak to a third game (2-2=4), dating back to March 11, 2024. Since Kempe’s debut on Feb. 16, 2017, only Anze Kopitar (9) has more assists against the Blackhawks amongst Kings skaters than Kempe’s 6.
– With his pair of assists, Kempe records his 15th multi-point game of the campaign, tying Kevin Fiala for the team lead.
– Quinton Byfield (0-2=2) notched his 29th and 30th assists of the season for his 12th multi-point game of the season and the 16th of his career. Byfield becomes the first Kings skater 21 years of age or younger to record at least 16 multi-point games since Drew Doughty (32). With his pair of assists, Byfield becomes the fifth skater selected in the 2020 NHL Draft to record a 30-assist season, the 12th different Kings skater 21 years of age or younger to record a 30-assist season, and the first to do so since Drew Doughty (43A) in 2009-10.
– Phillip Danault (0-1=1) tallied his 24th assist of the season. Danault has recorded nine points (6-3=9) over his last eight games against Chicago, dating back to Jan. 15, 2020.
– Andreas Englund (0-1=1) recorded his ninth assist of the season, reaching the 10-point (1-9=10) plateau for the first time in his career.
– Drew Doughty played his 1,161st career game tonight, passing Harry Howell (1,160GP with NYR) for sole possession of the ninth-most games played by a defenseman for a single franchise in league history.
– Per NHL PR, the Kings scored four or more goals in the first period for the third time this season, one of five clubs to do so that many times in 2023-24. The others: Edmonton (5x), Tampa Bay (3x), Toronto (3x) and Washington (3x).
– Cam Talbot stopped all 28 shots faced in tonight’s victory, earning his 31st career shutout and improving his record to 20-16-6 on the season. This marks the sixth time that Talbot has recorded at least 20 wins in a season.

The Kings are traveling to Dallas following tonight’s win. The team will not hold a morning skate tomorrow and will return to the ice tomorrow evening at 7 PM local time, 5 PM Pacific at the American Airlines Center against the Stars.

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