The Los Angeles Kings have been finding their groove over the last three games, but on Thursday night in Buffalo, L.A. ran into a Buffalo Sabres team that has been rolling for the better part of two months.
Put simply, they’ve been a buzzsaw, winning 20 of their last 24 contests. While the Kings produced numerous scoring chances for themselves, the Sabres have been a better team all season and proved it in a 4-1 win over L.A.
The Sabres opened the scoring on the power play seven minutes into the game with a fortuitous bounce. A Sabres’ pass deflected off Cody Ceci’s left skate and found a way past Darcy Kuemper. Four minutes later, defenseman Mattias Samuelsson’s slapshot from the blueline squeaked through Kuemper’s glove and into the net.
Despite giving up a few goals in the first two periods, the Kings had the Buffalo defense and goalie Alex Lyons under siege. The Kings tested Lyons with 31 shots in the first two periods.
It looked like the Kings broke through early in the second period, but Alex Laferriere’s goal was waived off for goaltender interference on Corey Perry, who fell on Lyons shortly before Laferriere scored. Despite expressing his disagreement with the call, Jim Hiller decided not to challenge, and the score remained 2-0. One shift later, Alex Tuch tipped Bowen Byrum’s shot to extend the lead and give the Sabres control of the game they wouldn’t relinquish.
After the game, Hiller was still visibly frustrated about the disallowed goal.
“Well, [the referees] called it a goal on the ice, right? That was clear. Then they decided it wasn’t a goal on the ice by huddling. Somebody said that or believed that the goalie didn’t have a chance to reset after [Perry] was in the crease,” Hiller said. “I saw the goal on the ice, so I was pretty comfortable. I saw the goalie reset.”
L.A did respond on the man advantage one minute later, getting on the board just 11 seconds into the power play when Kevin Fiala found Adrian Kempe gliding towards the slot. Kempe’s redirect was his 18th goal of the season and team-leading 41st point.
In the third, after a largely quiet period offensively for the Kings, Tuch sealed L.A’s defeat with an empty-netter that also gave him a hat trick.
“We had some really good chances, I think we had 10 chances in the second period,” Hiller said. “I really liked how we played in the second, specifically, you just can’t get down by two, it’s hard for our team…Our margin for error is just thin.”
The Sabres’ win extended a long stretch of dominance for one of the league’s most surprising teams this season. Since Dec. 9, the Sabres are 20-3-1. Lyon’s evening between the pipes was also his tenth consecutive win in net, the longest in franchise history.
As for the Kings, they must continue to find consistency up and down their lineup. L.A. began the day tied for the last playoff spot in the bunched Western Conference wildcard standings in a close race with the San Jose Sharks, Anaheim Ducks and Seattle Kraken. But to separate themselves from their counterparts in the Pacific Division, they will need more scoring from their top-line forwards the rest of the way to make the Stanley Cup playoffs for the fifth straight season.