FINAL – Kings 0, Sabres 7 – Danault, Anderson, Hiller

The LA Kings dropped the opening game of a four-game roadtrip, by a 7-0 final against the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday evening at KeyBank Center.

Buffalo opened the scoring less than five minutes into the game through forward J.J. Paterka, who scored his third goal of the season against the Kings. Off a turnover in the defensive zone, forward Jordan Greenway fed Peterka through the slot and after his initial shot was stopped by Kings netminder David Rittich, Peterka found the rebound that snuck through and buried his 19th goal of the season.

In the final 3:02 of the opening period, the Sabres scored twice to open up a three-goal advantage at the first intermission.

First, Buffalo capitalized on another turnover in the defensive zone, as Greenway picked up a multi-point game after intercepting another LA clearing attempt before beating Rittich through the five hole. With inside a minute to play in the first period, the Sabres scored on the power play, as forward Kyle Okposo deflected a shot from forward Dylan Cozens and in for his 11th goal of the season and a 3-0 lead through 20 minutes.

Just shy of seven minutes into the second period, Buffalo extended its lead to four goals through defenseman Rasmus Dahlin. Dahlin, stationed at the right point, took a feed from defenseman Ryan Johnson, walked his way into the slot and shot off the post and in for his 14th goal of the season and a 4-0 lead.

The Sabres added a fifth before the end of the period through forward Zach Benson, taking a 5-0 advantage into the second intermission. Working out of the corner, Benson moved to the top of the crease and shot top shelf, past an unprotected Rittich, his fifth goal of the season.

The third period saw Buffalo add two more goals, after the Kings made a goaltending change at the intermission. Forward Alex Tuch capitalized on another turnover by the Kings to make it 6-0, with a clean wrist shot off the rush from the right-hand circle. Greenway made it 7-0 as he scored on his third effort, following a pair of saves from goaltender Cam Talbot, who entered the game in relief.

Hear from forward Phillip Danault, defenseman Mikey Anderson and Head Coach Jim Hiller following tonight’s game.

Phillip Danault

Mikey Anderson
On the team not having their energy through the entire night
Yeah, we started slow, I thought when you compare it to the Edmonton game, we weren’t very clean today. I felt like breakouts started on the backend with us, I think we needed to make a few more plays or at least put it in spots for the forwards to handle it. Things just didn’t go our way kind of the whole night and we didn’t do anything to really change it at all and we kind of just stuck with it the whole way.

On the team’s disconnected play on breakouts tonight
That’s just on the breakout side, I thought as a whole we didn’t defend like we normally do. Usually, we might be a little bit tighter, a little quicker, I thought we were a little slower as a whole, but that’s again sometimes just communication, sometimes it just doesn’t work out, they make a good play every now and then too, they’re a very skilled team. They took advantage of the holes they got.

On if the positive energy coming into tonight makes this game that much harder to take
Yeah, obviously we don’t want to give up seven and not score any. Having a performance like that doesn’t feel great, but again, we’ve got a great group of guys here. We’ve been going through it and guys have stuck together, so I don’t think there’s any concern about the group we have here.

On the needed response from a game like this, with important games to follow
We can’t be handing away games right now, but I think we can learn from the things that didn’t go well today, build on it, look at it, see what we need to do or just talk through some of the stuff that wasn’t there that should be.

Jim Hiller
On the team not having it tonight, right from the opening puck drop
Yeah, I think that was clear. I think the first shift, we spent a minute and 10 seconds in our own zone and that probably was a pretty good microcosm of what happened the rest of the way. We just, we weren’t ready, we got fed and it continued to happen for the rest of the game.

On the team’s play in the defensive zone tonight
We turned pucks over in really bad spots. There’s a time they’re not always going to connect, but you can’t turn the puck over up the middle. That’s hockey 101. We failed that tonight, big time. But, if there was another poor area, it was our d-zone coverage and for whatever reason, it was a couple different things, we left people wide open at our net front, confused ourself in coverage. They did a good job, but we just didn’t……I talked about getting back to our identity. Our identity is defense, it’s d-zone coverage. That was nowhere near our identity tonight.

On turnovers by certain individuals that led to goals
We don’t have to look at any individual tonight, that was collective from all of us, coaches included. There’s nobody necessarily you have to say, let us down, we let ourselves down. That’s something that we’re trying to do a better job of. We know where we’re at. We’ve talked about this, going into our first game, we did not answer the challenge of this game and we’ll get to the bottom of it.

On his first bit of adversity as a Head Coach and how he plans to steer the group through it
I’ll say this, I talked about the other night the guys had fun, it was a fun night. No fun today, no fun and we’re not going to do that. We’re not going to play like that. We are going to have energy, we are going to re-commit to our identity, which I said was checking. You saw it, we got away, I don’t know why, we’ll figure it out. We’ll go through the through the tape, we’ll talk to the guys, we’ll get to the bottom of it and we’ll correct it and get going again.

The Kings are scheduled to practice tomorrow at noon Eastern, 9 AM Pacific in New Jersey.

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