The LA Kings saw a late lead slip away as they dropped a 5-3 final against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday evening at Crypto.com Arena. <\/p>\n
Just over three minutes into the game, Tampa Bay opened the scoring with a tic-tac-toe power-play goal. Forward Nikita Kucherov made the first pass to forward Jake Guentzel, who quickly moved it to forward Brayden Point at the back post, where he buried his eighth goal of the season to give the visitors an early 1-0 advantage. <\/p>\n
The Kings answered right back, just over 60 seconds later, as forward Jeff Malott found the back of the net in his return to the Los Angeles lineup. As Tampa Bay tried to break the puck out of its end, forward Corey Perry forced a turnover along the boards, deflecting the puck to Malott in the right-hand circle. Malott curled onto his forehand and fired past Lightning goaltender Jonas Johansson and in, glove side high, for this third goal of the season and a 1-1 deadlock.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles then scored a power-play goal of its own, the third straight game with a goal on the man advantage, to take a one-goal lead just over six minutes into the game. After a well-executed sequence, with several shot attempts and puck retrievals, a Kevin Fiala rebound was knocked loose by Perry, directly to forward Andrei Kuzmenko, who snuck his shot inside the near post and in for his eighth goal of the season and a 2-1 lead through 20 minutes. <\/p>\n
Late in the second period, the Lightning tied the game at two on Point\u2019s second goal of the game. Tampa Bay took advantage of an fortunate bounce below the goal line in the offensive zone, as a pass deflected the other way to Point, who quickly pulled the puck to the front of the net and scored on the backhand for his second goal of the afternoon, tying the game at two goals apiece through 40 minutes of play. <\/p>\n
Inside the first two minutes of the third period, the Kings scored another power-play goal, restoring a one-goal advantage in the process. Attacking off in transition, after Kuzmenko knocked down a clearing attempt in the neutral zone, Perry used deception to thread a pass through the slot to forward Kevin Fiala, who collected and buried his 14th goal of the season at the back post to put the hosts ahead 3-2. Perry\u2019s assist was his third of the game, giving him his first three-assist game since November of 2019. <\/p>\n
Tampa Bay scored three goals inside the final four minutes of regulation to flip the script and turn a 3-2 Kings lead into a 5-3 Lightning victory. <\/p>\n
First, forward Anthony Cirelli tied the game around the net, as he buried a rebound goal on he backhand to equalize at three goals apiece. Forward Gage Concalves put the visitors ahead for the first time since early in the first period with his fourth goal of the season, again coming from just outside the crease, before Kucherov iced the game with the empty-net goal to bring us to the final score of 5-3.<\/p>\n
Hear from Perry, defenseman Cody Ceci and Head Coach Jim Hiller after tonight\u2019s game. <\/p>\n
Cody Ceci<\/p>\n
Corey Perry
On his takeaways from tonight\u2019s game
Tough last five minutes. They pushed, they found a way to tie it and they found that. Once they tied it, we really didn\u2019t have a response. We\u2019ve got to learn from it.<\/p>\n
On the frustration from losing a game the Kings should have won
Yeah, especially because we scored to go up 3-2 on the power play. It\u2019s frustrating. We have to learn from it. You can\u2019t anything away from them, they have some pretty good players over there, that\u2019s a pretty good hockey team. They just kept pushing. <\/p>\n
On losing what was an important game for a team battling to hold onto a playoff spot
You have to flush this one. It is what it is now. You move on and you go out there and get ready for the next one, it\u2019s going to be another tough one. <\/p>\n
On his unit scoring a power-play goal for the third straight game
I think we\u2019re finding our spots and our movement. Guys are shooting the puck in the back of the net, that\u2019s the biggest thing. Those feel good, but it would\u2019ve felt better if we got the W. <\/p>\n
Jim Hiller
On what he saw in the final five minutes tonight
I didn\u2019t think we gave them that much in the third, I thought we pushed back. Second period wasn\u2019t a good one for us. Then, whatever leads up to it, leads up to it and then there\u2019s two scrambles at our netfront and it finds a way to go in twice. I thought the two best chances of the period were Laferriere\u2019s breakaway and Kempe\u2019s semi-breakaway off the side, but that\u2019s not how hockey works. Sometimes, stuff goes in. <\/p>\n
On the frustration levels that come from losing a game like that
I can\u2019t tell you how disappointing is. It\u2019s hard to explain. The players put in a great effort, so to come up empty, I don\u2019t want to be over-dramatic, but it\u2019s difficult. It\u2019s difficult.<\/p>\n
On what he would have liked to see the team do differently in those final five minutes
Yeah, I\u2019m not going to get into it here, but there\u2019s multiple players with chances to clean that up. Sometimes it doesn\u2019t go in, nobody worries about it, right? It goes in, you\u2019ve got to worry about it.<\/p>\n
On taking the timeout in the third period to potentially challenge the third TB goal
We weren\u2019t sure. Cirelli was in [the crease], did Clarkie help him in? There\u2019s a history, certainly this season, of not overturning a lot, so you\u2019re going to have to make sure at that moment that you\u2019re pretty certain. We just felt like what we thought it was, not a high enough probability to challenge at that time.<\/p>\n
On the consistency he\u2019s starting to see from Clarke\u2019s power-play unit
They\u2019ve been dangerous. Some really good plays. Last one, a great play by Perrs, prior to that, Q had Perrs on the back door. That group, yeah, in particular, is moving it well, and they feel dangerous, as dangerous as we\u2019ve been all year.<\/p>\n
On the consistency he\u2019s starting to see from Clarke\u2019s power-play unit
We\u2019re looking for the result. We talked about it after the Colorado game. Played a really good game in Colorado. It makes you feel good that you\u2019re playing right there with them, doesn\u2019t make you feel good you didn\u2019t get the win. Tonight, again, another really good team. We should have won the game. We need to win that game, that\u2019s the bottom line. There\u2019s not a lot of moral victories in this one for us tonight. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Notes \u2013
\u2013 Forward Jeff Malott (1-0=1) scored his third goal of the season, his first career goal scored on home ice.
\u2013 Forward Andrei Kuzmenko (1-1=2) scored his eighth goal of the season for his fifth power play goal (PPG) of the campaign before adding his sixth helper of the season for the Kings\u2019 second power play goal of the evening. With his PPG, Kuzmenko has now scored three goals on the man-advantage in four career home games against the Tampa Bay Lightning (3-0=3), dating back to Jan. 18, 2023 w\/ VAN.
\u2013 Kuzmenko\u2019s 13 career power-play points (5-8=13) as a member of the Kings leapfrogs Ilya Kovalchuk (5-7=12) for sole possession of the fifth-most power-play points by a Russian-born skater in franchise history.
\u2013 Forward Kevin Fiala (1-1=2) collected his 13th helper of the season before breaking a tie with Adrian Kempe (13 G) by scoring his team-leading 14th goal of the season. Fiala (13 A) also ties Brandt Clarke (13 A) for fourth-most assists among Kings skaters this season and now has the second-most power play goals (4 PPG) behind only Andrei Kuzmenko (5 PPG).
\u2013 Forward Corey Perry (0-3=3) picked up his 10th, 11th and 12th assists of the season tonight, his fourth multi-point game and first three-point effort of the campaign. Perry extends his point streak to a third consecutive game (1-4=5), dating back to Dec. 27, 2025, and has now picked up six points (2-4=6) over his last many games against his former team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, dating back to Nov. 9, 2023.
\u2013 Perry becomes the 40th different skater in League history to reach double-digit assists in 20 or more seasons, and the first player in Kings history to record a three-assist effort at age 40 or older. At 40 years, 229 days old, Perry also became the oldest player in Kings history to produce a three-point night of any fashion, besting a mark set by Luc Robitaille (39 years, 336 days; 3-0=3 on Jan. 19, 2006) during Perry\u2019s rookie season in the League, per NHL PR. With the trio of helpers, Perry (499 A) now sits one assist shy of becoming the seventh skater selected in the 2003 NHL Draft to reach the 500-mark in his career.<\/p>\n
The Kings are scheduled to return to the ice for practice tomorrow at 11 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The LA Kings saw a late lead slip away as they dropped a 5-3 final against the Tampa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-386448","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\/386448","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=386448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}