FINAL – Kings 6, Wild 0 – Arvidsson, Moore, Hiller

The LA Kings made it two straight victories at home, as they skated to a 6-0 win over the Minnesota Wild on Wednesday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

Just over five minutes into the game, the Kings opened the scoring after a dynamic shift in the offensive zone. First, forward Kevin Fiala forced the turnover to win possession back for the Kings. Then, forward Trevor Moore got a shot off from the left-hand circle, with forward Phillip Danault getting a deflection on the shot, while stationed at the top of the crease, for his sixth goal of the month and a 1-0 advantage.

The Kings doubled their lead with a power-play goal, 15:03 into the game, opening up a 2-0 lead. Forward Anze Kopitar fed Fiala in the slot, with all the time in the world to get a shot off. Fiala picked his spot, high on the glove side, and buried it for his 23rd goal of the season, the second straight night the Kings have converted on the man advantage. The primary assist on the play was Kopitar’s 1,200th career point.

In his return to the lineup, forward Viktor Arvidsson got in on the action with his first goal of the season. Arvidsson took a stretch pass up the ice from defenseman Mikey Anderson to gain the offensive blueline. Holding up for help, Arvidsson attempted to setup Danault in the slot, but his pass deflected off a Minnesota player and in, past goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, for a 3-0 lead through 20 minutes.

Less than a minute into the second period, the Kings made it 4-0 through defenseman Matt Roy, who scored on the first shift of the middle stanza. Forward Quinton Byfield attempted to thread a pass towards the goal, but it kicked off the skate of a Minnesota defenseman, directly to a charging Roy, who worked his shot past Fleury and in for his fourth goal of the season.

In the latter stages of the second period, the Kings added two more goals in power-play situations, opening up a six-goal advantage.

First, defenseman Jordan Spence got in on the action with his second goal in four games. Skating again on the power play, Spence collected at the center point and wristed a shot towards the net, which again deflected off a Minnesota stick and in for a 5-0 lead. Then, just two seconds after a power play expired, Kopitar made it a multi-point night, as he hammed a Drew Doughty pass into the back of the net from the right-hand circle, Kopitar’s third goal in two nights.

Hear from Arvidsson, Moore and Head Coach Jim Hiller following tonight’s game.

Viktor Arvidsson

Trevor Moore
On if the first goal tonight set the tone for the team
Yeah, I think that’s what we, when we’re at our best, what we’re doing is forechecking. It was a really good track by Kev too, second effort. I think we want to be a forechecking team, we want to be hard to play against with good tracking.

On Fiala’s game overall, on an important night
I think Kevin’s always hungry. It maybe doesn’t look like it, from like his face or something, I don’t know, but Kevin’s always hungry. He wants to be an elite player and he is an elite player. He’s huge for us.

On the focus on a strong start tonight, after last night’s game against Chicago
I think it’s always a focus. We’re trying to find consistency with that and I think it was not the best last night, but it was a really good start against a really good team.

On the team doing a good job of staying out of things at the end of the game
Yeah, I think it was a good job by our guys to stand up for each other. Dubie, we don’t need him fighting guys up 6-0 at the end of a game like that, so good on him. We all stick up for each other.

On having Viktor Arvidsson back in the lineup again
He’s a really good player, adds so much depth to our team. So good on the power play and you see him out there, he’s just a ball of energy and he’s huge for us.

Jim Hiller
On if tonight was the “urgency” he’s been looking for from the team
Yeah, I thought we were ready to play and the nice part about it is, we were ready to play and we looked pretty good doing it. With Arvy back in and just kind of the full lineup and lots of energy and we got rewarded. We got a couple of lucky goals, we understand that, but it just felt right. We talked about it before, like what is the sense of urgency? You can feel it on the bench, you can get a sense in the room and we had that, we had that feeling and we followed it up.

On consecutive six-goal nights from the Kings
Yeah, there’s some breaks for sure. I think there were plenty of opportunities when we weren’t scoring as much, where we didn’t get any breaks. We had some good opportunities and hit posts, crossbars, they didn’t go in either. Sometimes, you like to think that it just balances out eventually, but I thought we did score some really nice goals. There were some good clean passes, breakouts all the way down, some nice finishes. The power-play goals were nice, Kopi’s I guess wasn’t a power-play goal, but through the seam, one-timer. It’s nice to see the guys execute at a high level.

On how much the Kings have missed a player like Viktor Arvidsson
Yeah, every team deals with injuries but Arvy’s kind of a special type of player. He is that Energizer bunny type of guy, personality-wise too, so you always miss a player like that in your room, on the bench during the game and he’s a heck of a player, you saw that too. I really liked that line, with him, Dubois and Laferriere, I thought they worked, they set the tone early themselves. Different stuff happened in the game and we didn’t get to see it come to the end, but they were good.

On the last time he saw 10 players thrown out of a game at the same time
I’m going to go with never, when’s the last time you guys have seen that? I understand from the referee’s perspective it was getting = it wasn’t that it was rough and it wasn’t even that it was that chippy – it was just getting a little bit tiresome, I think. I thought they made a good decision and I think from there on, I think people just played the game the right way the rest of the way.

On the balance between standing up for yourself and not getting into bad situations
It’s a fine balance sometimes, for sure, but I thought, we saw the scrums they had two, we had two, they had five, we had five at the end, so that’s all you want to do. You get in there, protect yourself, stand up for your teammates and that’s what we did. Of course, what set the tone in the game was that Engy hit and fight, Middleton’s a tough, tough guy, a tough customer, man. So that was that was for real, those two going at it.

On the Kings beating teams recently on hot streaks
It’s that preparedness and desperation we talked about earlier. When you see a team coming in, that’s going good, you’d like to think you have to dial it up more. You’d like to think about that level every night, but there are nights in an 82-game season where you just aren’t, but yeah, definitely like the response here recently.

Notes –
– Anže Kopitar (1-1=2) picked up his 23rd goal and 37th assist of the season for the 1,200th and 1,201st points (416-785=1,201) of his NHL career. Kopitar becomes the second skater in franchise history to record 1,200 career points, behind Marcel Dionne (550-757=1,307). Per NHL PR, Kopitar joins Alex Ovechkin (1,537 w/ WSH), Stan Mikita (1,467 w/ CHI) and Evgeni Malkin (1,280 w/ PIT) as the fourth player born outside North America to collect 1,200 career points with one franchise.
The assist marked the 785th of Kopitar’s career, tying Mats Sundin for the 38th-most assists in league history. With 1,201 points, the captain surpassed Dino Ciccarelli (608-592=1,200) for sole possession of 51st place on the League’s all-time points list.
– Kevin Fiala (1-1=2) notched his team-leading 10th power play goal and 39th assist of the season. It is the first time Fiala has recorded 10 power play goals in a season in his career, making him the 14th different Kings skater in the last 20 years to hit double-digits in goals on the man-advantage.
– Phillip Danault (1-1=2) scored his 17th goal of the season and added a helper to extend his home goal-scoring streak to a third game (3-1=4), all of which have been assisted by linemate Trevor Moore. Danault becomes the third Kings skater this season to record a three-game home goal streak, joining Pierre-Luc Dubois (3GP, 4-0=4; Jan. 24 – Feb. 20, 2024) and Kevin Fiala (4GP, 4-3=7; Feb. 20 – March 3, 2024).
– Adrian Kempe (0-2=2) tallied his 38th and 39th assists of the campaign for his 17th multi-point effort this season. Kempe has now picked up five assists (0-5=5) over his last two games. With the pair of assists, Kempe reached the 60-point mark (21-39=60) for the second consecutive season (41-26=67; 2022-23). The Kramfors, Sweden native becomes the first Swedish-born skater in franchise history to reach the 60-point plateau on multiple occasions.
– Drew Doughty (0-2=2) picked up a pair of helpers to reach the 30-assist mark for the eighth time in his career, the most by a defenseman in team history and tying Wayne Gretzky and Butch Goring for the fifth-most such seasons by any skater in franchise history. Doughty’s 37 career points (7-30=37) against Minnesota are the second-most by a blueliner in league history behind only Nashville’s Roman Josi (16-23=39).
– Viktor Arvidsson (1-1=2) scored his first goal and recorded his first multi-point game of the season.
– Mikey Anderson (0-1=1) recorded a helper on Arvidsson’s goal, his 15th of the campaign.
– Quinton Byfield (0-1=1) notched his 31st assist of the season, placing fourth among 2020 NHL Draftees behind Tim Stützle (47), Lucas Raymond (35) and Brock Faber (32).
– Jordan Spence (1-0=1) scored his second goal of the season to hit the 20-point mark (2-18=20) for the first time in his career.
– Trevor Moore (0-2=2) recorded a pair of helpers to extend his home point streak into a third game (1-4=5). With his pair of assists, Moore has registered 48 points (25-23=48) this season, matching his single-season career high (17-31=48) set in 2021-22.
– Matt Roy (1-0=1) scored his fourth goal of the season for the 23rd of his career, tying fellow teammate and defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov for the eighth most among blueliners drafted in the 2015 NHL Draft.
– David Rittich stopped all 30 shots faced for his third shutout of the season, bringing his overall record to 11-5-3 on the campaign.
– Seven different Kings skaters had multi-point efforts, the most in a single game this season.
– The Kings scored at least six goals in consecutive games for the first time since Oct. 6-8, 2009.
– It is also the 12th time in franchise history the team has scored six-plus goals in consecutive calendar days, and the first instance since Dec. 20-21, 1998.

The Kings have a scheduled day off tomorrow, following the back-to-back. The team will return to the ice on Friday for a practice day at Toyota Sports Performance Center at 11 AM.

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