The LA Kings returned to the win column on home ice as they skated to a 2-1 victory over the Ottawa Senators on Monday evening at Crypto.com Arena.<\/p>\n
Neither team found the back of the net in the first period, with Ottawa holding a narrow 11-10 advantage in shots on goal. Forward Adrian Kempe had arguably the best Kings chance of the period, off a centering feed from forward Quinton Byfield, but a big left-pad save from Senators netminder Leevi Merilainen kept the game 0-0 heading into the first intermission.<\/p>\n
The second period had the same outcome as the opening 20 minutes, as neither team found the back of the net. Each team hit the post in the middle stanza, with Claude Giroux ringing the iron for Ottawa before Quinton Byfield hit the pipe at the other end late in the period.<\/p>\n
Early in the third period, the Kings finally broke the deadlock as forward Warren Foegele opened the scoring. The play started with a cross-ice stretch pass from defenseman Joel Edmundson, who found his fellow Joel \u2013 Armia \u2013 skating down the right wing. Armia drove the puck down the wing and hit Foegele at the back post for the tap-in goal, his fourth of the season, and a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Midway through the third period, Ottawa tied the game as forward Fabian Zetterlund capitalised on a second chance in front of the net. Zetterlund was the first to reach a loose puck just outside the crease and his low shot found a way past Kings goaltender Darcy Kuemper and in for his third goal of the season and a 1-1 scoreline.<\/p>\n
Looking at a power-play opportunity inside the final 10 minutes of regulation, in a 1-1 game, the Kings finally broke through on the man advantage to pull back ahead. Stationed at the center point, defenseman Brandt Clarke shot through a double screen, provided by forwards Phillip Danault and Corey Perry, before the puck deflected off an Ottawa player and in for the go-ahead goal and a 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Hear from Clarke, Foegele and Head Coach Jim Hiller following tonight\u2019s win.<\/p>\n
Brandt Clarke<\/p>\n
Warren Foegele
On how the Kings stuck with it tonight and found a way to get the victory
I think it\u2019s just sticking to our identity, check for our chances, stay above. It was a resilient effort from our group, a bunch of penalties, able to kill those, and then the power play gets us a goal. Usually, when you win the special-teams battle, you\u2019ve got a higher chance to win game. Happy for our power play there at the end, Clarkie, to help us get the win there. <\/p>\n
On his goal tonight and how he saw that play develop
Yeah, it was two incredible passes, one by Eddy, passing it to Army weak side, a lot of poise by him to make that play. I think we can kind of worked on it last practice, try to maybe make more plays instead of the chip and chase always, but a great play by Eddy and then Army made a fabulous pass to me. My only job was just to beat my guy and I thought I could do that. Fortunate that it went in.<\/p>\n
On the importance of sticking with the process when things aren\u2019t flowing offensively
It\u2019s super difficult. It\u2019d be a lie to say that a couple of us aren\u2019t fighting confidence when the puck isn\u2019t going in, but we\u2019ve got an experienced group in here that kind of keeps everyone in check. At the end of the day, we want to win games and the best way to win games, for us, is the way we play and don\u2019t give the other team chances. The more we do that, we give ourselves better chance to win, and you just have to stick with the process and keep grinding to win. <\/p>\n
On Darcy Kuemper\u2019s continued importance for the group, especially in low-scoring games
Super solid. He gives us so much confidence to our group when we do make a mistake, we know that he\u2019s a brick wall back there and he\u2019s going to cover up for us. He\u2019s been tremendous and he\u2019s a great teammate as well.<\/p>\n
Jim Hiller
On finding a way to get a win tonight at home, while scoring a power-play goal
Well, we probably would\u2019ve won a few more if we\u2019d had one or two in some of those other games. The game, to me, is very similar to probably about five of them here that we\u2019ve had that maybe we\u2019ve come up short by a goal. You could be talking about, man, he didn\u2019t get the goal and it was a hard fought game and what\u2019s wrong, but when the puck goes in, now we\u2019re celebrating the results. So, that\u2019s how important it is. The power play, at 5-on-5, it was tough to get anything going on out there, for both teams and the special teams are critical. Look at our penalty kill, it\u2019s been really good, right? They\u2019ve got an excellent power play. So our penalty kill and special teams makes a difference.<\/p>\n
On scoring 5-on-4 and seeing Brandt Clarke make a play to win the game
I don\u2019t know that we were particularly sharp, they killed really well, but it only takes one good play, right? Sometimes it comes at the very end. So a really, really good play on the entry, Clarkie unloads and here we are, happy. <\/p>\n
On Darcy Kuemper\u2019s performance tonight in helping to secure the two points
Darcy played really well. I thought Meril\u00e4inen played really well, so I thought both goalies were good. We\u2019re pretty used to Darcy being our backbone and so for us, it\u2019s just kind of what we expect. We expect him to be good, to be good to give us a chance and Forsy\u2019s done the same thing for us. Again, I don\u2019t want to discount how Meril\u00e4inen played, I thought, Kempe had two or three really good looks in the first period and made a couple saves in the second and that\u2019s where Kuemper had to be good, in the second. Third period, we did a really good job, he didn\u2019t have much. <\/p>\n
On seeing Warren Foegele score and if that can be a sign of things to come for him
Yeah, I sure hope so. He penalty killed really well too, he was important there. I thought, Foegs got the goal, I thought the two players who really jumped out at me tonight were Foegs and Phil Danault. I thought those guys really had impactful games. Penalty kill, playing against Stutzle\u2019s line. We had a tough time in the faceoff circle, Phil was in there in the end, some big wins. Those two players in particular, who would tell you they haven\u2019t probably felt as good about their game as they\u2019d like to, they were really important for us tonight.<\/p>\n
On seeing Jordan Spence tonight after the game
I love Spenny, it\u2019s great to see him. He\u2019s one of those guys that brings a lot of life and energy to the locker room, so everybody, we all shared a lot of laughs with him. He\u2019s over in Ottawa now, he\u2019s their player and we wish him well. I\u2019m not going to talk about anything beyond that, outside of how much I miss being around him, because he was the guy that made a lot of people laugh.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Notes \u2013
Defenseman Joel Edmundson (0-2=2) posted a pair of assists tonight, bringing his total on the season to nine. With his effort tonight, Edmundson surpasses captain Anze Kopitar (8 A) for third most assists amongst all Kings skaters behind only Adrian Kempe and Quinton Byfield, each with 13 helpers to date.
\u2013 Edmundson has three multi-point performances on the 2025-26 campaign, one shy of a career-high four such games set a year ago. Only Byfield (6) and Kempe (5) have recorded more multi-point games in a Kings uniform this season.
\u2013 Forward Warren Foegele (1-0=1) scored his fourth goal of the season, his ninth point (3-5=9) in 15 career games played versus the Atlantic Division\u2019s Senators.
\u2013 Defenseman Brandt Clarke (1-0=1) scored his first power play goal of the season to seal the Kings victory, 2-1. The native of Nepean, Ontario, now has four points (1-3=4) in five career contests against his hometown club.
\u2013 Edmundson (1-9=10) and Clarke (3-7=10) became the first two Kings blueliners to reach double-digits in points on the season with the former providing the primary assist on the latter\u2019s tally.
\u2013 Forward Joel Armia (0-1=1) provided the primary set-up on Foegele\u2019s game-opening goal to extend his point streak to three games (2-1=3), dating back to this past Thursday, Nov. 20, in San Jose.
\u2013 Forward Corey Perry (0-1=1) recorded his sixth helper of the campaign on Clarke\u2019s go-ahead tally. The native of Peterborough, Ontario, played in his 1,409th career regular season NHL contest tonight, tying Hockey Hall of Famer and former Kings defenseman Paul Coffey (1,409 GP) for the 42nd most regular season games played in NHL history.
\u2013 Goaltender Darcy Kuemper made 28 saves on 29 shots on goal to earn his eighth win of the season and help the Kings extend their point streak against the Senators to 12 games (9-0-3).
\u2013 This is the club\u2019s longest active point streak against any one opponent and marks the sixth different point streak of at least 12 games against any one opponent in franchise history. Among all NHL teams, the Kings\u2019 12-game run against the Senators is tied for the 10th longest point streak against any one opponent.<\/p>\n
The Kings are scheduled to practice tomorrow at 11 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center in El Segundo. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The LA Kings returned to the win column on home ice as they skated to a 2-1 victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-307556","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\/307556","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=307556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}