In their first game action of the preseason Monday night, the LA Kings scored twice in the second period to erase an early deficit, but ultimately surrendered an overtime goal to Clayton Keller and fell to the Utah Hockey Club by a final score of 3-2.
Jeff Malott and Alex Turcotte scored for the Kings in the middle frame, while Caleb Jones, Francesco Pinelli and Jacob Moverare all recorded assists in the contest. Erik Portillo turned out 14 of the 16 shots he saw in net during the first 40 minutes before Carter George made his NHL preseason debut and stopped six of seven attempts that came his way in 20:19 of action.
The Kings got off to the start they were looking for on the road in front of a crowd that was looking for reasons to cheer. They put six of the first eight shots in the game on the Utah net, but couldn’t solve goaltender Connor Ingram early on.
Utah broke through first, scoring twice on consecutive power play goals less than two minutes apart from each other. Lawson Crouse found the back of the net first, converting a pass from former Kings defender Sean Durzi at 15:04, before Alex Kerfoot put a rebound past goaltender Erik Portillo just 1:42 later at 16:46 of the first.
Moments after the Crouse’s first goal, the physicality of the game was taken up a notch with two fights on consecutive faceoffs. First, Malott dropped the gloves with Liam O’Brien before Jack Studnicka, who was involved in a collision at the Utah net with Ingram earlier in the period, took on Travis Barron.
Malott got the Kings on the board with the team’s first goal of the preseason at 6:17 of the second, scoring on a rebound off a shot from the right point by Jones. The blast generated a second-chance opportunity that Malott, who was playing in his first game in a Kings sweater, quickly swept into the net to make it 2-1.
Six minutes later, Turcotte tied the game during a 5-on-3 power play at 13:42 of the middle frame. Turcotte was the beneficiary of a pass from the right-wing wall by Pinelli and moved the puck to his backhand before slipping it past Ingram.
LA was able to keep things even late in the second by killing off consecutive penalties to Trevor Lewis and Brandt Clarke to end the period that came in a span of 2:16.
The third was penalty-free and both teams settled into more of a defensive game that had a 9-6 edge in shots that favored the Kings, highlighted by quality chances for linemates Andre Lee and Samuel Helenius.
Keller’s deciding strike came just 19 seconds into overtime to give Utah a win in its first-ever home preseason game.
Hear reactions to the outcome from Malott and Turcotte, as well as defender Joel Edmundson and head coach Jim Hiller below –
Jeff Malott
On how it felt making an impact with a goal and a fight in his first game in a Kings uniform
Yeah, it’s was nice. Just looking to nail all the systems in and contribute where I can contribute and yeah, I think it was a nice start.
On the atmosphere for the first-ever preseason game in Utah
It was great. Obviously, they’re excited with a new organization here and everybody’s obviously coming out to support. So it’s fun to play in front of.
On his linemates and playing throughout the lineup
It was nice to get a chance to play with a lot of different guys tonight. Everybody’s excited, everybody’s moving quick, everybody’s looking to compete hard and make plays and, yeah, it’s been fun getting to build some chemistry with a bunch of different guys here.
Joel Edmundson
On playing his first game in a Kings sweater
Oh, it’s great. Yeah, I think there’s a few of us that had the first time putting it on. So we were very excited to get the game underway, it was a pretty cool moment.
On what it was like playing in front of the energized crowd
Yeah, we expected that. Obviously, whenever it’s a team’s first game, seemed like it was a sold out crowd, so they brought the energy tonight and I think there’s a couple moments we silenced the crowd and we had the momentum. But overall, it was a great experience.
On playing with Brandt Clarke in a game situation
I mean, you can do all you want in practice, but as soon as you get out there in the game, it’s a different story. You know, guys are forechecking hard, but, I thought he did great tonight, very vocal on the ice, which helps me, and I tried to do the same for him, so he was solid.
Alex Turcotte
On having a good start and playing well with linemates Trevor Lewis and Akil Thomas
It was great. Obviously, I played a to with Akil in Ontario last year and I love playing with him. Same with Lewy, I love playing with him too and I got a lot of reps with him when I was up last year. So it was nice to get, like, a real game and something different than the scrimmages, get some touches out there. I think we played really well, and we’re going to keep getting better.
On what he saw when he scored, getting a pass from Pinelli
It was a great pass. He was looking through the middle, and he kind of made the D-man bite, and he kind of cheated up to him and left me wide open. And, you know, I was yelling for it, and just made a good move on, a good way, and luckily, it went in.
On the play of Erik Portillo in net
Ports was awesome today. He bailed us out a lot there, especially we had a lot of penalty kills and he played great for us and stood in there for us. I thought we had a lot of the momentum in the beginning and with those PKs he did his best and he made some big saves for us.
Jim Hiller
His overall thoughts on his team’s play in the game
I really liked the game at five-on-five. They had their top guys in, their power play moved it well, so they did some damage there. But five-on-five I really liked our game and up and down the lineup for us, lot of young kids played and did a good job.
On Malott and Studnicka’s performances and physicality in their debuts
Well, the first thing that jumps out at you, and I know there’s not much fighting left in hockey. The first thing that jumps out at you is two guys who are new to our organization, and they’re dropping the gloves. That jumps out at you right away. So right away you get a check mark for that. And I thought, Melott ends up scoring, Studnicka had two or three chances after that, so not that I want to critique everybody and rank everybody, but those two players, for me, made an impression.
On how systems looked that are being worked on during training camp
The obvious one is the neutral zone, and I thought that got better as the as the game went along. I thought our neutral zone in the third period was really good. We executed quite well. We liked that. We liked some of our breakouts, the rest of the stuff was hard work and they have a pretty good lineup in there so you have to adjust to the speed of top tier NHL players and our guys did that. But the two areas, I would say, is the neutral zone and the breakouts from the neutral zone.
On how the physicality of training camp translated into game action
Oh, I thought it carried over right away. I mean, I thought we were on them, forecheck them early, probably our best. Then there’s a couple fights. So that seemed to me to come right over, and there was good intensity right to the end.
On the importance of scoring on the 5-on-3
It was really important and I thought part of that was Turcotte won that face off on that on the goalie right side. That got that thing started. He gets rewarded in the end. But it was a big faceoff. Probably most important part of that.
The Kings return to training camp practice on Wednesday morning before traveling to Las Vegas to face the Golden Knights in their next preseason game later that evening at 7 p.m. inside T-Mobile Arena.
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