The LA Kings began a short roadtrip with two points, as they skated to a 4-2 victory over the Utah Mammoth on Monday evening at Delta Center in Salt Lake City. <\/p>\n
The Kings opened the scoring just shy of eight minutes into the game, as they made a great play in transition to get on the scoreboard. Forward Kevin Fiala threaded a pass to forward Adrian Kempe, who made a nice move around his defenseman and another around Utah goaltender Karol Vejmelka to the backhand and in for his tenth goal of the season, tying him with Fiala for the team lead in goals on the season.<\/p>\n
Just over two minutes later, the Kings doubled their lead through forward Joel Armia. Fiala was the facilitator once again, as he rounded his own net and hit Armia with a terrific stretch pass to the far blueline, springing the Finnish winger in alone on Vejmelka. Armia picked his spot and scored high on the blocker side for his sixth goal of the season, putting the visitors ahead 2-0 midway through the opening period. <\/p>\n
Just 31 seconds into the second period, Utah got on the board with a power-play goal from forward Dylan Guenther. Off a Kings penalty that carried over from the first period, Guenther, stationed at the center point, one-timed a low-to-high feed from forward Clayton Keller through a maze of traffic in front and into the back of the net for his 11th goal of the season, cutting the Los Angeles advantage to 2-1. <\/p>\n
Early in the third period, the Kings found an important insurance goal from forward Anze Kopitar to restore the two-goal advantage. Coming off a good shift in the offensive zone for the Kings, Kopitar drove the net and got a backhanded rebound off, which was blocked, but he buried his first ever goal at Delta Center on the second effort. Kempe collected the primary assist on the play, giving him a multi-point game. <\/p>\n
Utah pulled a goal back with just over seven minutes remaining in regulation to make it a 3-2 game. Forward Nick Schmaltz moved his way down the right wing and found forward Clayton Keller in the slot. Keller pulled the puck onto his backhand and snapped a shot, high on the blocker side, past Kings netminder Darcy Kuemper and in for his 11th goal of the season, bringing it back to a one-goal game.<\/p>\n
Armia picked the empty net late in regulation from his own zone, making it a multi-goal game and a 4-2 Kings win.<\/p>\n
Hear from Fiala, Kempe and Head Coach Jim Hiller after tonight\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n
Kevin Fiala<\/p>\n
Adrian Kempe
On the team carrying over confidence from Saturday into tonight\u2019s first period
Yeah, confidence booster for everybody, I think, after that game on Saturday. You come in here and feel good about your game. Obviously you don\u2019t expect to go out and score six every game, but we kind of kept it going in the first period and then it was a tough game from there on. I think second period, they kind of came back at us and then third, I think we started playing better again. It was tight game all the way to the end, but a pretty solid effort I think. <\/p>\n
On how he saw the play on his goal develop tonight
A good play by Kevin to hold the puck, wait for their D to come to him before he slid it to me. Then, just kind of little bit of luck, getting in the d-man\u2019s triangle there and then I had more speed, I just tried to take it to the net and make a move, it worked out. Felt good. <\/p>\n
On Fiala\u2019s play tonight as a playmaker
He\u2019s pretty much unstoppable when he gets hot and when he gets into these types of games where he\u2019s feeling it. We\u2019ve seen it before. When he gets hot, he\u2019s one of the best players out there. It\u2019s fun to watch.<\/p>\n
On seeing Anze Kopitar find a new building to score in, with a huge goal for the team
Yeah, he told me that after the game, I didn\u2019t know that, so that was nice. They should have probably given him an assist there at the end too, but it felt good. He played a really solid game tonight, so it\u2019s fun to watch him too. <\/p>\n
Jim Hiller
On the Kings carrying over Saturday\u2019s offensive showing into the first period tonight
I thought we were dangerous in the first, probably had a chance to get a couple more, which would have been really nice, maybe a bit of a cushion, because they pushed at the end. Kempe\u2019s goal, I\u2019d have to think about it, but probably his nicest goal of the year. A great pass by Kevin, saw him with his speed and then the most important part is that finish, because that\u2019s hard to do. That looked like a goal scorer and got us going in the right direction.<\/p>\n
On Kevin Fiala\u2019s playmaking impact on tonight\u2019s game
Two great plays. Those are big time plays. We talk about it, you get an assist, but they\u2019re not all created equal. Those are two of the best ones you can have. He was important in that way tonight. <\/p>\n
On putting Fiala with Kopitar and Kempe on shifts after penalties
We\u2019ve got Laf penalty killing this year, Army is a penalty killer, so we don\u2019t kill Juice and Kopi as much, so that gets them fresh and ready. I\u2019ve done that for a while, as Kevin would always come out of the out of that penalty kill, so now it\u2019s the three of them, so they get their shifts together. That worked out pretty good for us tonight.<\/p>\n
On the team\u2019s composure in closing out tonight\u2019s win
We\u2019ve been in so many games, this type of game, far too many for our liking to be honest with you. I thought they pushed us pretty good in the second period, they got on the power play, got some momentum, got us on our heels, but I thought we gathered ourselves in the third, despite them pushing a little bit at the end. I liked how we played the third. <\/p>\n
On winning again on the road, making 10 victories on the season away from home
We play one-goal games for the most part and you like to come out the right side of it. We\u2019ve come out on the right side of it more often than not on the road than at home, we just have, for a lot of different reasons. We\u2019ve got the mothers with us here, so we\u2019re going to give them all the credit in the world. Drew\u2019s birthday, his mom gave us a nice speech after the game, so we\u2019ll give the moms some credit. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Notes \u2013
Forward Adrian Kempe (1-1=2) scored his 10th goal of the season on a feed from Kevin Fiala (0-2=2) to tie the two 29-year-olds for the most goals among Kings skaters this season. Kempe later added his 16th assist of the season to break a tie with Quinton Byfield for sole possession of the most assists by a Kings skater this year.
\u2013 With his 39th career game-opening goal, Kempe tied Butch Goring and Ziggy Palffy for the sixth most in Kings history, per NHL PR. Fiala picked up his 10th and 11th assists of the campaign within a three-minute span to extend two different steaks to a fourth game.
\u2013 The Swiss winger has six total points (2-4=6) spread across four consecutive games against the Utah Mammoth, dating back to Oct. 26, 2024, and has found the scoresheet in each of his last four road games (1-4=5) this season, dating back to Nov. 17 in Washington. Since being acquired by the Kings on June 29, 2022, Fiala has notched 32 multi-point games on the road, which is tied with Adrian Kempe (32 GP) for the most by any LA skater in that span.
\u2013 Forward Joel Armia (2-0=2) scored his sixth and seventh goals of the season tonight, the first of which accounted for the Kings\u2019 eighth goal across a three-period span, dating back to the second period of Saturday\u2019s 6-0 shutout win over the Chicago Blackhawks.
\u2013 With his first career points against the Mammoth, Armia also notched his first multi-goal game as a member of the Kings and the 12th such performance of his career.
\u2013 Captain Anze Kopitar (1-0=1) scored his sixth goal of the season, the 305th even-strength goal (EVG) of his career. With the marker, Kopitar breaks a tie with Dave Taylor (304 EVG) for sole possession of the third most in Kings franchise history. The list is paced by Luc Robitaille (344 EVG) and Marcel Dionne (369 EVG).
\u2013 The captain\u2019s marker was his first career goal versus the Mammoth, who became the 32nd franchise that he has scored a goal against. The goal was also Kopitar\u2019s franchise-record 79th career game-winning goal, which passes Peter Bondra and Steve Thomas (both with 78) for the 11th most among players born outside North America in NHL history, per NHL PR.
\u2013 Defenseman Joel Edmundson (0-1=1) recorded his 10th helper of the campaign, snapping a tie with partner Brandt Clarke (9 A) for the most by a Kings blueliner this year. The assist also stands as Edmundson\u2019s fifth point (2-3=5) in four career games against the Utah Mammoth.
\u2013 Defenseman Cody Ceci played in his 900th career game this evening, joining fellow Canadian blueliner Morgan Rielly as the first two members of the 2012 NHL Draft class to reach this milestone. Ceci is the first defenseman to play his 900th career game in an LA Kings uniform since Drew Doughty did so on Jan. 14, 2020, in Tampa Bay.
\u2013 Goaltender Darcy Kuemper made 19 saves to earn his 51st career victory as an LA King and 23rd such result on the road, breaking a tie with Felix Potvin (22 W) for sole possession of the ninth most away victories in Kings history. Kuemper and the Kings are a perfect 4-0-0 against the Mammoth in franchise history.<\/p>\n
The Kings will return to the ice for morning skate on Wednesday, December 10 at Climate Pledge Arena, in advance of that evening\u2019s game versus the Seattle Kraken .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The LA Kings began a short roadtrip with two points, as they skated to a 4-2 victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-337084","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\/337084","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=337084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}