FINAL – Kings 4, Maple Leafs 2 – Fiala, Kempe, Petersen, McLellan

The LA Kings finished a three-game homestand with a record of 2-1-0 following a 4-2 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

Forward Kevin Fiala led the way with two points, including his first goal at home as a member of the Kings, while Anze Kopitar had two assists and Viktor Arvidsson, Adrian Kempe and Gabe Vilardi also scored in the victory.

The Maple Leafs opened the scoring, however, with the lone goal of the first period, a power-play goal, to take a 1-0 lead through 20 minutes. A Mitchell Marner shot was deflected wide off the endboards, with the puck ricocheting to John Tavares in front, where he slotted it in at the near post for his fourth goal of the season.

The Kings struck back to take the lead heading into the third period.

First, the Kings scored on consecutive power plays to take a 2-1 advantage. Early in the second period, Fiala set up Kempe with a one-timer, which he buried from the right-hand circle for his sixth goal of the season. Exactly six minutes later, the second power play unit cashed in off the rush, as Phil Danault toe dragged to the outside, created space for himself and fed Arvidsson in the slot for the goal and the lead.

The Kings added a third goal, this time at 5-on-5, to open up a two-goal advantage. The new-look top line took advantage of a strong shift down low, with Anze Kopitar centering the puck to Vilardi, who remained red hot with a finish from the slot, his seventh goal from his last ten games played.

Toronto capped off the period with a late goal, to hit the intermission trailing 3-2. After the Kings were unable to clear their own end, a shot from the point took a wicked deflection off the endboards and bounced directly to forward Pierre Engvall in the slot, where he finished first time for his first goal of the season.

Just over two minutes into the third period, the Kings extended their lead back to two goals, thanks to an individual effort from Fiala. The speedy winger pickpocketed a Toronto defenseman in the neutral zone, created a breakaway with his skating stride and finished with a wrist shot on the glove side for his second goal of the season, his first at Crypto.com Arena.

The Kings locked things down from that point and closed out a 4-2 victory, with Toronto having a goal disallowed for a high stick within two minutes to play in regulation.

Hear from Kevin Fiala, Adrian Kempe, Cal Petersen and Todd McLellan following tonight’s game.

Kevin Fiala

Fiala changes lines and picks up 2 points #GoKingsGo | @LAKings pic.twitter.com/owGRIMdzPl

— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) October 30, 2022

Adrian Kempe
On getting the bounceback effort he was looking for after Thursday’s loss
Yeah, for sure. I think we played a good team game again, a good 60 minutes. The d-zone was a lot better than the last game, so we’re happy with that, and we keep scoring goals which is a plus for the team for sure.

On getting two goals on the power play tonight
Keep shooting, I think being more of a threat, both with Dewy at the top and from the flanks a little bit more. We were trying to think a little bit too much before that and we didn’t want to shoot the puck. I mean, just going back to being simple I think is the key right now and obviously getting a couple goals gives you some confidence too.

On how he felt the Kings cleaned things up defensively in tonight’s win
Yeah, for sure and especially against these types of teams, you know, they play with a little bit more risk, I’m not gonna say than we have, but than we want to. Today, I think we did take care of our end a lot more and we got our chances at the other end too, which is a good thing. If we keep playing like that against those types of teams, I think we have a good chance.

Cal Petersen
On if tonight looked more like how the team wants to play
Yeah, one-hundred percent. Those are the kinds of games that we want to win and those are the games that got us far last year. I think that was a good step to getting our really our full team effort to where we want it to be.

On if there’s anything specifically he worked on throughout the week
Just simple things. I knew my game was right there and it’s just doing the right things to get your confidence to where it needs to be. I wanted to make sure I put in the work to be prepared whenever my next opportunity was.

On making a breakaway save early and if that helped him to lock in
Yeah, it’s obviously nice, it beats giving it up, but I mean I’ve played in a lot of games where I give up the first shot and a lot of games I’ve made the first save and the outcomes have all been different either way, good games and bad games. It obviously helps the confidence to get it back in, but you just take it one shot at a time whether it’s the first shot of the game or the last shot.

Todd McLellan
On an improved overall performance and the direction the team went tonight
Yeah, we’ve done this a couple times this season where we get back to what we need to do. That’s a pretty dynamic, offensive team that we played against tonight. Last year, we went into their building, checked pretty well and came up with a win and we tried to run and gun with them here and came up with a big loss. We tried to use some of last year’s approach for the game. We targeted three areas that we thought we needed to take care, that was it, and for the most part the guys got it done. That’s a real good sign and now the consistency is something that we need to grow.

On getting the desired momentum off of special teams tonight
Yes, we did. Not pretty, but they went in and the goals were important. Again, that power play is dangerous, the quality of player they can put on the ice and the way they move the puck around, so the penalty killers did a real good job. You throw in the pulled goalie situation for the last two minutes, there was enough kill for a full night. Everyone to a man, D, forwards and especially Cal I’m really happy for him, they all did a real good job on the penalty kill.

On locking the game down in the final period
I thought we had a good response. It was near the intermission, which helped us, we talked about it and we liked a lot of things in our game. We didn’t like how that that goal happened, a turnover and then we kind of went to sleep for a second, but if we think we’re going to be perfect, which we’re all striving to be, we’re going to go insane, it doesn’t exist. We want to push for perfection and I think we realized we made a mistake, it ended up in our net, let’s go again, let’s not let it affect us.

On getting production from the changes made to the lineup
Kevin coming in has added a dimension [offensively]. I thought him playing in the position he did tonight balanced things out a little bit more. He’s been able to create with workers and creative players in his career, so he did a real good job there.

I thought with Kevin going with Ras and that line, there was little more balance and all the lines contributed. The powerplay did its thing. I’m sure everybody would have preferred to have four or five minutes of ice time, they always do, but it was distributed pretty well.

On the decision to dress Sean Walker tonight
Sean has worked hard in practice and we’ve got to keep in mind his injury, nobody talks about that and what he went through. It’s tough to come back from that, there are still repercussions to that as far as fatigue goes and how you feel, so sometimes he’s going to need the odd day off. We’ve talked to Blakey a lot about that because he went through it and he talked about the first four or five months of the season, sometimes you’re really sore. It’s not the injury itself, but it’s everything else around the injury that that can be fatigued, but he worked hard in practice, he felt good and it was time to play him again.

Notes –
– Gabriel Vilardi scored his team-leading seventh goal of the season. Vilardi ranks tied for second in the NHL in goals this season, trailing only Edmonton’s Connor McDavid. Vilardi now has two, three-game goal streaks within the first 10 games of the season.
– Adrian Kempe played in his 400th career NHL game tonight, becoming the 14th player from the 2014 draft class to reach the achievement. Kempe tallied his sixth goal of the season in the win, second most on the team.
– Kevin Fiala (1-1-2) scored his first goal at Crypto.com Arena as an LA King, as he tallied his third multi-point game of the season.
– Anze Kopitar collected two assists for his second multi-assist game of the season, and leads the Kings with eight from 10 games played.
– With an assist on Viktor Arvidsson’s second period goal, Phillip Danault (0-1-1) extended his season-long point streak to four games.
– Goaltender Cal Petersen improved to 3-1-0 on the season as he made 26 saves on 28 shots.

The Kings are scheduled to practice tomorrow morning at 10 AM before departing for St. Louis later in the day.