It was a big night for milestones as the LA Kings (6-4-4) defeated Winnipeg Jets (9-4-0) by a final score of 3-0 on Tuesday night at Crypto.com Arena, earning their first home win of the 2025-26 regular season.<\/p>\n
Goaltender Darcy Kuemper finished with 23 saves to earn his first shutout of the season, while Drew Doughty scored an empty-net goal in the final minute to become the team\u2019s all-time goal scoring leader among defenders, Adrian Kempe scored the 200th goal of his career and Corey Perry added an assist in his 1,400th career NHL game.<\/p>\n
The Kings got off to the start they were looking for defensively and did not allow a shot on goal from Winnipeg for the first eight minutes of the first period. What would\u2019ve been the first shot for the Jets ended up in the net, but was quickly disallowed due to goaltender interference on former Kings forward Gabriel Vilardi. The call was held up after a coach\u2019s challenge by the visitors.<\/p>\n
With less than three minutes remaining in the opening period, one of the Kings new-look lines cashed in, with the help of Joel Armia, who made a strong play in the offensive zone. Armia controlled the puck behind the net and eventually found Kempe open in front of the net for the finish at 17:09.<\/p>\n
The milestone goal also had an assist credited to Mikey Anderson, his first helper of the season.<\/p>\n
Neither team was able to get on the board during the second and LA carried its one-goal lead into the final frame. Through 40 minutes, the Kings allowed only 13 shots on goal to the league\u2019s top offensive team.<\/p>\n
Kevin Fiala added insurance with five minutes left to play, capitalizing on a double-minor penalty to Winnipeg\u2019s Vladislav Namestnikov who hit Perry with a high stick. Fiala wristed a shot past goaltender Connor Hellebuyck on the power play for his sixth strike of the year and made it a 2-0 game. Assists on the play went to Perry, who had just re-joined the game after absorbing the penalty, as well as Quinton Byfield.<\/p>\n
Doughty put the game away with 54 seconds left on the clock, scoring his 162nd career goal in unassisted fashion to pass Rob Blake and set a new franchise record.<\/p>\n
Fiala\u2019s tally was the lone man-advantage goal of the contest, with the Kings going 1-for-6 on the power play while holding Winnipeg to an 0-for-5 mark.<\/p>\n
Postgame thoughts from Kempe and Doughty, as well as head coach Jim Hiller are below.<\/p>\n
Adrian Kempe<\/p>\n
Drew Doughty
On how special the milestone is to him
It feels special for sure. It\u2019s a huge honor. I looked up to Rob Blake as a young boy being an LA Kings fan. When you come into the league it\u2019s never something you even think of. So it\u2019s kind of shocking that this all happened but obviously very proud and so thankful for the organization and my teammates especially, couldn\u2019t have done it without them.<\/p>\n
On playing with Mikey Anderson again after some time apart
We were good. We played that top line the entire night and they didn\u2019t get much. They might\u2019ve gotten a couple chances here and there, but when you play against some of the best players in the world, that\u2019s going to happen. We did a great job, it was like we never left each other.<\/p>\n
On Corey Perry and his play during his 1,400th game
He\u2019s always in the thick of things. Even tonight, he gets one in the face and is crying, trying to get back on the ice for the 5-on-3, he couldn\u2019t even open his eyes and he\u2019s trying to get back out there so it just shows you his heart, how much he loves the game of hockey and how much he\u2019ll do for his teammates. No surprise to me, another guy that I watched growing up and no surprise to me that he\u2019s played in 1,400.<\/p>\n
On the way the team is playing overall
I definitely think we\u2019re on the right track, but we need to score more goals. We can\u2019t be having a 1-0 lead, I mean we can, but it\u2019s not ideal. We want to have a two or three goal lead going into the third period. It\u2019s hard to hold on to a one-goal lead, all of a sudden one shot goes in and everything deflates. It\u2019s hard to hold on to those. We did a good job but I think we need to get some more insurance goals.<\/p>\n
Jim Hiller
On the way his team won the game
I\u2019ll take any win, you know me. I think we played to our identity, and you have to start there, you can\u2019t come off that. Because then you get in all kinds of trouble. We\u2019re going to start scoring more, I really believe that. We got some really good looks again tonight. Hellebuyck played well, but we\u2019ll take the zero and we\u2019ll take the win.<\/p>\n
On the performance of Kuemper in the game
I thought Hellebuyck played really well but Kuemps gets the shutout in the end and he made three or four that I thought were really important saves. He did his job, and it\u2019s up and down the lineup tonight. Everyone did their part and it\u2019s a hard game against a really good team. There\u2019s not a lot of room out there either way so you might come up relatively empty on the scoresheet but that doesn\u2019t mean you didn\u2019t play well. It\u2019s just one of those games. They\u2019re kind of a playoff-style team and it was kind of a playoff-style game.<\/p>\n
On the play of the Kings special teams units in the win
Well, the first one is we win the special teams battle. When we went up to Winnipeg I thought it was a similar game, it was an even game, we lose the special teams battle and we lose the game. Tonight, we win the special teams battle so that was important to win it. Our power play wasn\u2019t great at 5-on-4, at 5-on-3 we had some really good looks that Hellebuyck saved, but I thought our penalty kill was the best that it\u2019s been tonight. I thought we were more aggressive tonight than we had been. It looked a little bit more like it did last year, so that was probably the highlight of the night for me against an elite power play unit.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Notes \u2013
\u2013 Forward Adrian Kempe (1-0=1) scored his sixth goal of the season\u2013\u2013the 200th goal of his career\u2013\u2013in the first period of tonight\u2019s contest, which ultimately stood as the game-winning goal. The native of Kramfors, Sweden, is the 33rd Swedish-born player and the ninth player from the 2014 NHL Draft class to reach the 200-goal milestone in his career.
\u2013 Kempe is also the 10th player in franchise history to score 200 goals in a Kings uniform.
\u2013 The 29-year-old forward also extended his point streak against the Manitoba-based franchise to a sixth straight contest (5-5=10 in 6 GP), dating back to April 1, 2024, which is the longest active point streak against Winnipeg among any League skater.
\u2013 Forward Kevin Fiala (1-0=1) scored his second power play goal of the season to double the Kings\u2019 lead in the final frame. By doing so, he rejoined Kempe atop the Kings\u2019 leaderboard in goals and surpassing him as the Kings\u2019 leading power play producer this season with five points (2-3=5).
\u2013 Defenseman Drew Doughty (1-0=1) iced the Kings victory with his 161st career goal, breaking a tie with Rob Blake (161) for the most by a blueliner in franchise history.
\u2013 Forward Joel Armia (0-1=1) played in his 600th career regular season NHL contest tonight, becoming the 33rd player of Finnish nationality to reach this mark.
\u2013 Armia also earned his fifth assist of the campaign, making him the 24th player in Kings franchise history to find the scoresheet in their 600th career regular season appearance. The last individual to do so was defenseman Joel Edmundson, who also had an assist in career game #600 against the Winnipeg Jets at Crypto.com Arena on April 1, 2025.
\u2013 Defenseman Mikey Anderson (0-1=1) notched his first assist of the campaign and now has a pair of points across two straight games against Winnipeg, following his first goal of the season on Oct. 11 at Canada Life Centre.
\u2013 Forward Corey Perry (0-1=1) skated in his 1,400th career regular season NHL game this evening, becoming the 44th player in League history to reach the milestone. The native of Peterborough, Ontario, is joined by Brent Burns (1,510 GP), Alex Ovechkin (1,503 GP) and Anze Kopitar (1,463 GP) as the fourth active player to reach the 1,400-game milestone.
\u2013 With his assist on Fiala\u2019s third-period marker, Perry becomes the 18th of those 44 members of the 1,400-game club to find the scoresheet in the milestone game. Perry became the second player in franchise history with a point in his 1,400th career game, joining Anze Kopitar (0-1=1) on Dec. 7, 2024, against Minnesota.
\u2013 Center Quinton Byfield (0-1=1) recorded his 100th career assist tonight with his power play helper on Fiala\u2019s . There have only been eight players to record 100 assists with the franchise before turning 24 years of age and only two in the last 30 years: Anze Kopitar (220A before 24 y.o.) and Drew Doughty (145A before 24 y.o.).
\u2013 Goaltender Darcy Kuemper turned aside all 23 of the Jets\u2019 shots on goal tonight to earn his fourth victory, and first shutout, of the year. It also marked his first career shutout against the Winnipeg Jets.<\/p>\n
The Kings are scheduled to practice on Wednesday morning, November 5 at 11 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center and then host the Florida Panthers on Thursday night, November 6 at 7 PM at Crypto.com Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a big night for milestones as the LA Kings (6-4-4) defeated Winnipeg Jets (9-4-0) by a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-263964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}