The first week of the season has come and gone for the Los Angeles Kings. Their three games saw mixed results, and they hope to improve in their games going forward.
The Kings opened their season with a 4-1 loss on Tuesday night against the Colorado Avalanche. Dressed in its freshly introduced black alternate uniforms and silver helmets, LA looked a step behind the Avs all night long. After a scoreless first period, last year’s trade acquisition, Martin Necas, opened the scoring in the second for Colorado. The Avalanche potted two more that period, with two assists coming from star forward Nathan MacKinnon, making him the Avalanche’s all-time leading scorer.
The third period began in a similar light, as Necas added another on a power play to make it 4-0. Just about five minutes later, the Kings finally cashed in on a power play of their own, as Kevin Fiala blasted a one-timer past Scott Wedgewood, scoring LA’s first goal of the season to make it 4-1. Despite numerous power-play opportunities, Los Angeles could not generate any more offense, and the score remained until the final horn.
In the second half of the back-to-back, newly acquired goaltender Anton Forsberg made his first start of the year for LA on Thursday night, taking on the star-studded and Pacific Division opponents, the Vegas Golden Knights. The two teams went at it for an absolute barn-burner.
This time LA got off to a hot start, scoring twice in the first period thanks to an Andrei Kuzmenko power-play goal and Quinton Byfield’s first goal of the season. But the Kings took their foot off the gas in the second, allowing Knights forward Pavel Dorofeyev to singlehandedly tie the game. Dorofeyev notched three goals in the second, with two of them coming on the power play. Vegas continued their strong play early in the third, scoring twice in less than nine minutes to take a 5-3 lead.
Despite struggling to gain traction against a stingy Vegas team, Thousand Oaks native Trevor Moore found the twine for a shorthanded goal, cutting the deficit to one. The goal rejuvenated Los Angeles, and they tied the game two minutes later on a Brandt Clarke tip-in goal, off a nice centering pass from Quinton Byfield. Neither team could score in overtime, but the Kings eked out a 6-5 win in the shootout.
On Saturday, the Kings traveled to Winnipeg for a matinee matchup against last year’s Central Division-champion Winnipeg Jets. LA produced some offense early in the second period to take a 2-1 lead, thanks to Mikey Anderson and Adrian Kempe, but eventually succumbed to the Jets’ pressure. Defensive lapses were the story on Saturday, and led to a tough 3-2 loss.
A positive for LA thus far is the performance of the Kuzmenko-Kopitar-Kempe line, which has been humming to start the young season. Each player has three points, with them all combining for a beautiful spin-o-rama drop and a centering pass on Kempe’s goal versus Winnipeg.
One of the biggest question marks leading into the regular season was whether or not back-end additions Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci would fit Jim Hiller’s system. So far, the answer is a resounding no. Since being paired together, both Dumoulin and Ceci are getting dominated, as their 25% expected-goals percentage (xG%) ranks ninth-worst in the league for pairings who have played together for at least 20 minutes.
The defensive liability comes while the two other Kings pairings of Anderson-Doughty, and Edmundson-Clarke are playing quite well, both with positive xG%. In response, Hiller shifted the defense pairings in practice, moving Dumoulin to the top pairing with Doughty, while bumping Anderson down with Ceci. Time will tell if these pairs bring more success, but Anderson’s defensive prowess could make for a solid match with Ceci. On the other hand, Dumoulin’s familiarity with playing with veteran defensemen, as he did in Pittsburgh with Kris Letang, spells optimism.
LA will take its tweaked lineup into St. Paul, Minnesota, on Monday night to face Kirill Kaprizov and the Minnesota Wild. Puck drop is at 5 p.m. PT.