The LA Kings dropped another close game, as they fell by a 2-1 margin on Thursday evening against the Chicago Blackhawks. <\/p>\n
The opening period came and went without a goal, despite Los Angeles and Chicago combining for 25 shots on goal between them. Corey Perry led all players with five shots on net in total. <\/p>\n
Chicago opened the scoring midway through the second period, as they converted on their second power-play chance of the evening. Forwards Connor Bedard and Tyler Bertuzzi executed a give-and-go play in tight, as Bedard dished down low and worked his way to the net before he buried the return feed from Bertuzzi for his team-leading 18th goal of the season and a 1-0 lead for the visitors. <\/p>\n
The end of the second period saw the game go from what should have been 1-1 to 2-0 Chicago in quick succession. At the offensive end, Chicago goaltender Spencer Knight turned the puck over behind his own net, but the puck trickled through the crease, somehow staying out. Seconds later, Blackhawks defenseman Wyatt Kaiser scored at the other end with 5.1 seconds left in the middle stanza to make it a two-goal lead. <\/p>\n
Just past the halfway mark in the third period, the Kings pulled one back with an all-out hustle play from forward Warren Foegele. Foegele won the race down the ice to beat out an icing call, before he fed the puck to forward Trevor Moore crashing the net, with the Thousand Oaks, CA native burying his fourth goal of the season past Knight to bring the Kings within 2-1, though they would pull no closer than that.<\/p>\n
Hear from Foegele, goaltender Darcy Kuemper and Head Coach Jim Hiller after tonight\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
Darcy Kuemper<\/p>\n
Warren Foegele
On the frustration in a game like that
I don\u2019t know if the first 40 was our best and we pushed hard in the in the last 20, but it\u2019s hard to win games like that, right? We\u2019ve been on the right side of it but we\u2019ve also been on the wrong side of it with these one-goal games. I think the disappointing thing is that we just, we weren\u2019t really connected in the first two periods and it definitely bit us. <\/p>\n
On the team\u2019s extended drought offensively
I think this game, a lot of it has to do with confidence. When pucks aren\u2019t going in, for a stretch there, it definitely wears on guys in the room. You can\u2019t feel sorry for yourself, you\u2019ve just got to keep it simple, go to the net and you just hope that one goes off your butt or your chest, or something like that. There\u2019s not much room out there, but you\u2019ve just got to work hard and find a way.<\/p>\n
On beating out the icing to set up Trevor Moore for the team\u2019s only goal
Mooresie got it in there deep and I just won the 5050 and made a play on it, and fortunate enough that it went in. The game is about 50\/50\u2019s and if you win your puck battles, you give yourself a chance. Pretty direct play as well, so the more we can do that, the more chances we can get. <\/p>\n
On taking the third period effort and translating it over 60 minutes
One thing I noticed from watching games is it feels like when we\u2019re down goals, we\u2019re really more on our toes. I felt like last year, that was a lot of our success was being on our toes. I don\u2019t know if we\u2019re trying to sit back or anything like that, but it feels like when we\u2019re trailing we keep things much simpler and we\u2019re trying to score a goal. So, maybe if we have that mindset to start the game, it might be a lot easier for us.<\/p>\n
Jim Hiller
On his takeaways from tonight\u2019s game
The first period was terrible and that might be polite. Second period, we had a stretch of maybe six minutes. The third period, we pushed hard, it might have worked, but we gave them way too much the other way, despite that. <\/p>\n
On the team\u2019s style of play tonight
We had a team of players tonight \u2013 and I\u2019m trying to think of, I\u2019m sure there were a few exceptions, usually it\u2019s the other way, I\u2019m sure there was a few exceptions \u2013 we had a team of players tonight that thought that they were going to play the game their way, how they wanted to play it. We play a really demanding style of hockey on the players and they do an exceptional job of it, have done it for years and there always looks like there could be a more exciting and sexy way to do it. I think you saw players try and play that game through, at least most of the first 40 minutes and I think you saw a pretty clear result in that style of hockey for our team in particular.<\/p>\n
On Phillip Danault\u2019s game after moving down in the lineup
I think if the whole team, I can tell you right now, is pulling for Phil, the whole team. I thought he just had, a couple good chances, five good chances tonight, it wasn\u2019t just those other ones, he had a couple shots from the slot. I\u2019ll tell you, everybody\u2019s excited, the whole bench, guys want him to score, we all do. Despite that, I thought he had his best game of the year tonight, I really did, all over the ice, and he really played well. Credit to him. <\/p>\n
On the frustration he\u2019s sensing from the team\u2019s offensive struggles as a whole, over now an extended stretch
There\u2019s some [visible frustration] for sure, but for the most part, we\u2019ve stuck with it and stayed the course. If I would\u2019ve seen this game two weeks ago and then maybe a decent game and then this game again, then I would say absolutely, absolutely, but no, I think our guys have stuck with it. I\u2019m sure they\u2019re not happy and they want more, we\u2019re all humans here, but again, I would first off give them credit for being able to be mentally focused and being able to consistently play a good, honest, hard, structured game, except tonight, tonight was that was not in their mind. That\u2019s that was really obvious to me early. <\/p>\n
On the continued struggles of the power play tonight, going 0-for-5
We didn\u2019t like it before and maybe we were better before than we are now. We got frustrated when we were 16, 17, 18 percent and over the last while, trying to tweak it, trying to change, trying to work on it, we haven\u2019t got any results from that whatsoever. That\u2019s disappointing, extremely.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Notes
\u2013 Forward Trevor Moore (1-0=1) scored his fourth goal of the season, extending his home point streak against the Blackhawks to a seventh game (4-4=8), dating back to March 24, 2022. Moore becomes the fourth player in franchise history to record a home point streak of at least that length against Chicago, joining Butch Goring (5-11=16 in 8GP), Bernie Nicholls (9-8=17 in 10GP) and Marcel Dionne (6-14=20 in 11GP).
\u2013 Moore becomes the first undrafted skater in franchise history to record a seven-game home point streak against the Blackhawks and is the only active undrafted skater across the League to have achieved such a streak. He is the first undrafted skater to do so since Wayne Gretzky\u2019s 17-game home point streak against Chicago (11-34=45) from Nov. 26, 1980 through Feb. 1, 1992.
\u2013 Forward Warren Foegele (0-1=1) collected his first assist and fifth point (4-1=5) of the season with his set-up on Moore\u2019s goal.
\u2013 Defenseman Joel Edmundson skated in his 100th game as a member of the Kings this evening, becoming the fifth Manitoba-born defenseman to skate in 100 games with the franchise, joining Grant Ledyard (142GP), Brian Engblom (202GP), Larry Brown (364GP) and Neil Komadoski (378GP).
\u2013 Captain Anze Kopitar suited-up for his 28th career home game against the Blackhawks, tying former Kings captain Dustin Brown for the most home games against the team from the Windy City in Kings franchise history.
\u2013 Forward Alex Laferriere recorded eight hits in tonight\u2019s contest, tying a single-game career-high he set earlier this season, Oct. 8, in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
The Kings have a scheduled day off tomorrow and will return to the ice on Saturday for morning skate at Toyota Sports Performance Center, in advance of that evening\u2019s rematch against Chicago. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The LA Kings dropped another close game, as they fell by a 2-1 margin on Thursday evening against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-329242","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\/329242","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=329242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}