FINAL – Kings 2, Jets 5 – Roy, McLellan

The LA Kings fell for the third straight game, as they lost by a 5-2 final against the Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

The Kings opened the scoring with a power-play goal from forward Anze Kopitar, coming prior to the halfway mark of the opening period. Taking a feed from forward Kevin Fiala, Kopitar worked his way to the top of the crease, where he buried his second effort, off his own rebound, for his 11th goal of the season. With the primary assist, Fiala became the first Kings player to reach 20 assists on the season.

Forward Alex Laferriere scored one of the sharpest-angled goals of the season later in the opening period, giving the Kings a two-goal advantage heading into the first intermission. After he won the faceoff in the offensive zone, Laferriere took a pass down low from forward Pierre-Luc Dubois and snapped a shot off the back of the helmer of Winnipeg goaltender Connor Hellebuyck and in for his third goal of the season.

With two goals from forward Nikolaj Ehlers, the Jets equalized the score during the middle stanza.

Ehlers scored first from the slot, as he took a pass from forward Gabriel Vilardi, dragged the puck onto his forehand and snapped a shot past Kings netminder Cam Talbot on the glove side, cutting his team’s deficit to 2-1. Just past the halfway point of the game, Ehlers buried his second goal of the game and ninth goal of the season, as he streaked down the left wing and once again scored with a clean wrist shot, tying the score at two goals apiece.

With exactly five minutes remaining in the middle stanza, Winnipeg took its first lead of the evening through forward Mark Scheifele. Off an extended shift in the offensive zone, Scheifele worked his way to the net and swatted home a broken play for his tenth goal of the season. Vilardi and Ehlers picked up the assists on the play, the third point of the evening for both players.

Two and a half minutes into the third period, Winnipeg extended its lead to 4-2, as Vilardi collected his fourth point of the evening with his first career goal against the Kings. Vilardi collected the puck on his backhand in the slot and he fired past Talbot for his second goal of the season.

Scheifele picked up his second goal and third point of the evening with the empty-net goal, sealing the final score at 5-2.

Hear from defenseman Matt Roy and Head Coach Todd McLellan following today’s defeat.

Matt Roy

Matt Roy speaks with media postgame🎤@LAKings I #GoKingsGo pic.twitter.com/ImxBpxC0Iz

— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) December 14, 2023

Todd McLellan
On what he felt changed tonight between the first period and the final 40 minutes
I think your assessment is real accurate. The first period was a little bit of feeling out, we were fortunate to get the lead. I thought we played the second period lackadaisical, not focused, not driven, played with a lot of hope in our game, played in pieces. The first goal, Phil Danault’s the fresh guy who steps on the ice, the rest of the guys are tired. He’s got to manage that puck until we can get guys off, we turn it over, it goes the other way. Reminds me a little bit of the goal in New York against the Islanders, you’re up 2-0 and you’re lackadaisical and you’re sloppy and then you allow the other team to gain some momentum. You know, we didn’t really have our game going in the first either. It was good, but it wasn’t great.

On the performance of Winnipeg’s top line in tonight’s game
They played an outstanding game. They were good, we didn’t have an answer for them tonight. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that because they deserve the praise and the three of them played really well, four or five of them, I guess, when they got their pairs out there.

On the game management mistakes and how to correct those
We’ve got slapped here a couple of times, maybe our team needs it a bit. I’m concerned about game management again, I’m concerned about playing in pieces. Four fresh guys and one tired guy, I don’t know how many times tonight somebody missed a shift because somebody couldn’t get off. Sometimes that’s due in large part to what the other team is doing to you, hemming you in, but I don’t think we’re playing as units of five right now, I don’t know if there’s a little selfishness creeping in, but it’ll be addressed and it will be fixed.

On what a team can find out about itself by learning from adversity
We’re not going to roll through and win 41 road games. We’re not going to play at a .750 or .780 percentage, it hasn’t been done. Boston was the closest team to doing it. It’s not humanly possible, the rest of the teams are pretty good, so we’re going to go through rough patches. It’s been a while since we had a rough patch. You could look back to the beginning of the year, where we played like this and gave up five goals a night or whatever it was and we had to figure out ways to fix it. We’re capable of doing that and we expect the group to respond to it.

On the distribution of minutes between centers and lines
I’ve tried to lay this out for everybody, when you come and you have the three types of centermen – four because I appreciate what Lizzo does – somebody has to give something up. I think Kopi got to 21 minutes tonight, a lot of it was the last four minutes, he barely came off the ice, but we’ve consistently played at about 19, 17, 14 and a half, 15 if you want that and then 10 and we’re not changing. I don’t care who plays 19 17, 14 and a half or 11, I don’t care. They decide it.

On if there’s a point in the season where he can make judgement about Pierre-Luc Dubois’ production
No, I don’t think so, because he’s also playing on a team that, it’s hard for me to say this right now because we didn’t play real well tonight, but we’ve had some success and he’s played a big part in that. We will write and we’ll want unreal stats from every individual on our team, but the most important one is the wins and the losses. We can all be better and we’ll all push towards that.

On if he feels that Dubois’ has had less consistency with his linemates than other players
I would disagree with you. The only line we haven’t tinkered with was Kopi’s line. Really, Fiala moved up from PL’s line, he was playing with our leading scorer, and we just flipped those guys around. Grunny and JAD have moved around a little bit, so it hasn’t been dramatic. PL gets to play on the on the power play, our second-unit power play, and people around him have to help him out, but he’s also here to make other people better as well.

Notes –
– Anze Kopitar (1-0=1) scored 11th goal of the season for his team-leading fourth power-play goal (PPG) of the campaign. It is the 115th PPG of his career, eight shy of tying Dave Taylor (123) for the third-most in franchise history.
– Kopitar’s tally on the man-advantage was his 10th in the 2023 calendar year. Over the past decade, the only Kings players with more in a calendar year are Arthur Kaliyev (11 in 2022) and Jeff Carter (11 in 2018 & 2013).
– Alex Laferriere (1-0=1) recorded his third goal of the season. Laferriere’s three home goals are tied for the fourth most in the league among rookie skaters this season.
– Pierre-Luc Dubois (0-1=1) notched his seventh assist of the season. Dubois has now collected a point in back-to-back games against the Jets (1-0=1 on Oct. 17).
– Kevin Fiala (0-1=1) tallied his 20th assist of the season to become the first Kings skater of the campaign to reach the 20-assist mark. Only three Kings players in the past 20 years have reached such mark in fewer games: Ziggy Palffy (19 GP in 2003-04), Anze Kopitar (21 GP in 2020-21) and Pavol Demitra (22 GP in 2005-06).
– Quinton Byfield (0-1=1) picked up his 14th assist and 22nd (8-14=22) point of the season, tying his single-season career high for points in a campaign (3-19=22 in 2022-23).
– Trevor Lewis skated in his 700th game as a member of the Kings. Lewis becomes the 10th player in franchise history to suit up for 700 games in a Kings uniform, and is just the second U.S.-born skater to do so after Dustin Brown (1,296).
– With Anze Kopitar and Kevin Fiala’s points tonight, the Kings now have three skaters scoring at-or-above a point-per-game pace through the teams’ first 26 games to start the season. The last time the Kings had three skaters scoring at-or-above a point-per-game pace through the first 26 games of the season was in 2005-06; Pavol Demitra (13-22-35), Alex Frolov (13-18=31) and Craig Conroy (11-16-27).

The Kings are scheduled to practice tomorrow at 11 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center.

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