FINAL – Kings 1, Kraken 6 – Kopitar, McLellan

The LA Kings concluded their four-game homestand on a down note, with a 6-1 defeat against the Seattle Kraken on Monday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

Arthur Kaliyev scored the lone Kings goal tonight, on the power play, while Cal Petersen took the defeat in goal with 32 saves.

The Kraken opened the scoring just 14 seconds into the game, putting the Kings behind the eight-ball early. The Kings turned the puck over in their own zone, with Seattle capitalizing and Alex Wennberg burying the rebound from the slot. The goal conceded was the fastest the Kings have allowed a goal to open a game this season and the sixth-fastest overall in the NHL.

LA came back, however, with a power-play goal to knot the score at one still early in the first period. On the first man advantage of the night, forward Adrian Kempe used an unselfish feed to find Arthur Kaliyev in the left-hand circle, with the rookie forward burying his sixth power-play goal of the season. The Kings have now scored on the power play in four straight games.

Seattle found the back of the net just over three minutes after Kaliyev’s goal, to take a one-goal advantage into the first intermission. Off of another Kings turnover in the defensive zone, the puck came to Adam Larsson at the right point, where he sent a shot through heavy traffic in front and inside the far post, putting the hosts ahead 2-1.

The visitors also scored the lone goal of the second period to open up a two-goal advantage. Off a 3-on-2 rush, forward Viktor Rask kept the puck himself down the left wing and shot past Petersen, on the blocker side, for his sixth goal of the season and a 3-1 advantage on the evening.

Seattle poured it on in the third period to open up a 6-1 advantage midway through the final frame, the eventual final margin. First, forward Jordan Eberle blocked a shot at his defensive blueline, took it the length of the ice and snapped his shot inside the far post and in to make it 4-1. Then, just 29 seconds later, the Kraken converted off of a 2-on-1 rush, with Jared McCann burying his team-leading 24th goal of the season. The Kraken added a sixth, a tough-luck bounce off of Jordan Spence’s neck and in, to push the score to 6-1.

Hear from Anze Kopitar and Todd McLellan following tonight’s game.

Anze Kopitar

Kopitar talks with the media following the loss#LAKingsLive | @LAKings pic.twitter.com/GIQA7tvm9M

— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) March 29, 2022

Todd McLellan
On the disappointment in that performance, in an important game
Well, I balance that with how well we’ve played in a lot of important games, teams are going to have that. It’s disappointing, I’m not going to go on a big rant, it’s disappointing. I think today’s game is a combination of the last four seconds in Saturday’s game, and the first 14 seconds in today’s game. We opened the door for them on the last shift on Saturday and they took advantage on the first shift today. After that, they pushed us out of the game with work ethic, execution, faceoffs, you name it, in every aspect of the game. Am I disappointed? Yeah, I’m disappointed, but there’s a whole locker room of guys that are disappointed. We’re all in it together, we’ll stew in it a little bit, but we’re moving on, that’s what we’ve got to do at this time of the year.

On the point in the game he felt it got away
We weren’t good from minute one on, we were chasing it, there was doubt right away. Where did it, not necessarily begin, but where was the dagger? Probably the blocked shot, Eberle’s goal, we had a little bit of momentum.

On if he saw anything coming into the game suggesting that type of performance
I think there’s a lesson for our team to learn, because we controlled the other game pretty well, talking about Saturday’s game, and we didn’t finish it the way we needed to, and that’s happened more than once this year. You think about a playoff series, we’re talking about inexperience. You do that in a playoff series, you give somebody life and the other team takes advantage. Now, we take a day off, we skate in the morning, expect to have a little life, jump, energy and some excitement and none of that existed, for whatever reason, and we get scored on 14 seconds in. Really, the goal was we were lazy, we got beat up the ice and it just carried all the way through.

On his takeaways coming out of tonight, and headed into Edmonton
Well, all 60 minutes. I think, when you lose 6-1 and it likely could have been worse, there’s not a lot you’re going to take from positives out of it. We were beat in every facet of the game today. We’ll look at it, we’ll show the players some things, we’ll get them to use it as some teaching opportunities and then we’ll move on, that’s all we can do. I don’t know what the outcome will be in Edmonton, I just know what we’re living right now wasn’t good enough.

On his takeaways coming out of tonight, and headed into Edmonton
Well, all 60 minutes. I think, when you lose 6-1 and it likely could have been worse, there’s not a lot you’re going to take from positives out of it. We were beat in every facet of the game today. We’ll look at it, we’ll show the players some things, we’ll get them to use it as some teaching opportunities and then we’ll move on, that’s all we can do. I don’t know what the outcome will be in Edmonton, I just know what we’re living right now wasn’t good enough.

On his 1,000th game tonight and being honored before the game
The opportunity to be recognized was special. I think that the Kings, and all the NHL teams, but the Kings do it pretty well. I’ve been here for Carts, Kopi, Dewy, Quickie and many others, so I’m grateful for that.

Notes –
– The Kings scored on the power play tonight for the fourth consecutive game, and the fifth time in six games.
– Forward Arthur Kaliyev tied Anaheim’s Trevor Zegras for the NHL’s lead in power-play goals by a rookie forward with his sixth PPG of the season.
– Overall, Kaliyev’s 13 goals rank eighth in the NHL among first-year skaters and are tied for sixth on the Kings among all skataers.
– Lias Andersson was the only Kings skater with an even rating tonight.
– Defenseman Jacob Moverare led all Kings players with five shots on goal.

The Kings are scheduled to return to action tomorrow morning for practice at 10 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center.