When the first period ended at Staples Center yesterday, the score was Detroit 3, Los Angeles 0. It seemed as though the Kings’ 8 game win streak was about to come crashing to a halt at the hands of the Red Wings. However, this is a different Kings team than in years’ past. Maybe as recently as last season, the Kings might fold their tents facing such a deficit (of course, against anybody but Dallas, right?), but the Kings settled down, started playing their game and by the time the second period was over, the scoreboard read Red Wings 3, Kings 3.

Kings were badly outplayed in the 3rd period, with few quality shifts in the Detroit zone, but they made them count. Michal Handzus collected his own rebound and tucked it in past a sprawling Jimmy Howard for his second goal of the game and what would turn out to be the game winner.

It’s impossible to understate what a critical cog Handzus is in the Kings’ machine. He wins face-offs, and plays a ton of minutes shadowing the opposing teams’ top center, has great puck possession skills (which is why Terry Murray should keep he and Alexander Frolov on the same line permanently), and makes a perfect screen/deflector in front of the net. 6 of his 15 goals are game winners. Handzus will likely end up one of 4 or 5 Kings with 20+ goals in 2009-10. If he was the Kings’ most improved player last season, he’s even better this year.

The streak of 9 consecutive wins is a new franchise best. Jon Quick continues to lead the NHL in wins with 34, and is now one win short of tying the Kings all-time season high for wins by a goaltender, set by Mario Lessard in 1980-81. It seems as though that mark could well fall before the Olympic break.

The Kings will carry their winning streak into Anaheim on Monday. Expect Honda Center to be 2/3 Kings fans. The Ducks have won 9 straight at home, but the Kings own the Ducks this season – having won all three games between the two clubs this season, and having won the last 5 games. Jon Quick is 5-0-0 all time vs. Anaheim.

After Anaheim the Kings face the lowly Oilers and the surprising Colorado Avalanche at home before the Olympic break. It will be important for the Kings to keep focus and continue to play their game. If they do, winning out to the Olympic break (which would give them 12 straight) is a real possibility.

Kings take on Anaheim at the puddle on Monday night, installment number 4 of this year’s Freeway Faceoff. Kings only need to earn one more point in the final three games to clinch the season series. I suspect they’ll do much better than that.

Go Kings!

-JS

I think one has to be encouraged by what we’ve seen from the Los Angeles Kings the last two games. The Kings have battled some adversity and managed to maintain an even keel, not wavering from their game plan. It’s resulted in victories over two very tough opponents – first Buffalo on Thursday night, and last night the Detroit Red Wings – a team the Kings hadn’t beaten in their last six tries.

Adversity mounted early on as Detroit took a 2-0 lead into the first intermission. Valterri Filppula seemingly skated through a handful of Kings and took advantage of Jon Quick committing to the butterfly block a bit too early to put the Red Wings on the board first, and Todd Bertuzzi tipped a Brian Rafalski shot from the top of the circle on a 5 on 3 power play to extend the lead to two.

But the Kings, instead of folding their tents, stepped up their game in response. Anze Kopitar scored his 20th goal of the season early in the second period – Jimmy Howard stopped his original shot but failed to get a handle on the rebound. Wayne SImmonds chipped the rebound over and behind Howard and Kopitar batted it out of the air into the net. The goal validated the Kings’ efforts and despite some pressure by Detroit, you kind of got the feeling that the Kings were going to get the equalizer sooner than later. That equalizer didn’t come in the second period, but Jon Quick did make a key stop on Detroit’s Derek Meech who broke in alone coming out of the penalty box.

The Kings continued to work hard and tied the game on a great play in the 3rd period. Kopitar curled in the left corner of the Detroit zone and lost an edge, falling to the ice, but managed to keep the play alive by dishing it to Simmonds, who found the trailer, Peter Harrold moving in unmolested. Harrold’s shot beat Howard to the stick side to tie the game at 2.

Kopitar got his third point of the night on the Kings’ third straight goal, a beautiful tic-tac-toe passing play in which Kopitar found Scott Parse, who dished it to the front of the net, right to the stick of the waiting Brad Richardson, who buried it past Howard.

The Kings played very solid defensive hockey in the final 7:58 of the third period, and Jon Quick made several key stops to preserve the victory. The win vaults the Kings into a tie for 6th in the Western Conference and gives them a 3 point cushion over Detroit.

The rest of the Kings road trip, is a bit of a slippery slope. It’s easy to look at games in Toronto and Columbus, two of the league’s worst teams this season, and assume that four points are in the bag. However, the Kings have a penchant for the poorly played, letdown loss after a big win, and no Kings fan would be suprised to see a less than stellar effort and loss of points. What I can hope, is that the Kings will continue to work hard, play the game that’s gotten them four points in their last two games, and if that’s the case it’s reasonable to expect the Kings could return home to Staples on Feb 2nd having won at least 3 of 5 on this road trip.

Who knows, maybe there will be some guy named Ilya Kovalchuk on the Kings roster by then too. More of my thoughts on that in the next couple of days.

Kings in Toronto Tuesday night – no local TV feed, so if you have Center Ice, you’ll have to put up with “Holy Mackinaw!” about 50,000 times.

Go Kings!

-JS

If before this season started, you’d have told most long time Kings’ fans and followers that we’d be 4 points back of 8th in the West in late February, and that the Kings would be getting excellent goaltending but would be unable to find the net, most people would’ve had the source committed for insanity. Yet, this is where we are circa February 27th, 2009. The Kings have gotten outstanding goaltending on all 3 games of this road trip thus far, but have only one win to show for it. Having scored two goals in 9 periods of hockey has a lot to do with that.

If you go to NHL.com, Chris Osgood is the headline for the 30 saves made in his return to action. I think this is more than misleading if you actually watched the game. Other than a couple of times in the first period, Osgood wasn’t seriously tested most of the night. The Kings missed a number of open nets (including Kyle Calder, who simply had to have his stick on the ice in order to redirect a Teddy Purcell pass into the open net in the second period) and the vast majority of Osgood’s saves came on shots from the perimeter with no traffic in front of the net. Not to say that Osgood didn’t do his job, but I thought he was far from being the story of the game.

At the other end of the ice, Jon Quick played an outstanding game, stopping 39 of 41 Red Wing shots and making quite a few saves of the breathtaking variety. His only mistake of the game was a costly one – a mishandle of the puck (possibly also a miscommunication with Kyle Quincey) behind the net that led to Detroit’s second goal. Still, Quick gave the Kings a chance to win, and when your goaltender stops that many shots and gives up two, it’s on the rest of the team to find a way to score enough goals to win. You couldn’t have asked much more of the Kings’ goaltender tonight.

So, another loss, zero points in a game when the Kings got great goaltending (Erik Ersberg was also fantastic in Philadelphia Wednesday evening and I personally thought Joffrey Lupul should’ve been called for goalie interference on Philadelphia’s game winner). What gives? When the team seemed to be scoring almost at will on their last road trip and even the first couple games of that subpar homestand, and now appears to be snakebitten, there are going to be a lot of questions.

The first thing I’d like to see is for Terry Murray to reunite the Calder/Stoll/Brown line and put Patrick O’Sullivan back on the top line with Kopitar and Frolov. Beyond that, the Kings need to get back to doing what they did so well, not so long ago – crash the net, get traffic in front of the goaltender – keep it simple.

With 6 weeks of the season left, 21 games to be exact, being only 4 points out means it’s far from over. The Kings’ next two opponents, Chicago and Columbus, have already accounted for 4 each of the Kings 61 points. The playoffs are still a distinct possibility, especially with the kind of goaltending we are getting, but the scoring drought needs to end very soon.

Kings are in Chicago for a matinee Sunday, noon California time.

-JS

From Dictionary.com:
deja vu

noun
the experience of thinking that a new situation had occurred before

If you watched the Kings play in the last 3 games, you probably experienced a bit of this. It feels uncomfortably like last season all of the sudden. Except last season we could score. Ouch.

While last season’s games were lost on a porous defense and shaky goaltending, this season’s first real “slump” of sorts has seen the team unable to put the puck in the opponents’ nets. The Kings’ offense looks completely uninspired. The team’s 3 30 goal scorers from last season look impotent. Alexander Frolov, perhaps the Kings’ most creative offensive player this season, hasn’t scored in a week either. Things look rather dire. Gone is that competitiveness in every game that we saw earlier in the season.

Don’t get me wrong, Detroit is an elite NHL team. Given the way the Kings have performed lately coming into tonight, one had a bad feeling this was what we would see. The Kings’ ability to hang with Detroit in two games earlier this season seemed to warrant some optimism. That’ll teach me I guess. I wouldn’t even want to play the Islanders right now.

If coach Terry Murray has benched Tom Preissing for long stretches for “not competing hard enough”, I’d still rather see him in the lineup than Denis “The Human Turnover” Gauthier. Gauthier was responsible for boneheaded turnovers that led directly to Detroit’s first and third goals. At this point, one can hope that his name becomes synonymous with “Healthy Scratch” when Jack Johnson returns, possibly as soon as Saturday in Dallas. In addition to Gautiher, Tom Preissing, John Zeiler and Brian Boyle were all -2 tonight.

The long stretch of road games begins, with one more home game two weeks from tonight before the calendar turns to February. It’s do or die time for the Kings. They are getting decent goaltending and reasonably decent defensive play (aside from the aforementioned Gauthier and Preissing), but it will be hard to win any games if the team can’t score. I don’t expect the slump to last all season, but if it continues much longer now the team will get buried in the standings quickly.

The positive – Dallas lost tonight. The Kings play in Dallas Saturday morning, and a victory gets them back out of the Pacific Division cellar.

-JS

For about 53 minutes tonight, the Kings played neck and neck with Detroit. The last 7 minutes, however were a disaster. Unable to hold on to the momentum gained on Dustin Brown’s goal that gave the Kings a lead, Detroit scored three unanswered goals (the last being an empty netter) and went on to win 6-4. Once the Red Wings started pressing, the Kings started gripping their sticks a little too tight, and the rest was history.

Jonathan Quick made some outstanding saves in the game but for the most part looked like, well…a rookie. If the Kings hang on for a point at least, Murray can go back to him on Tuesday in Columbus, but the go ahead goal by Detroit’s Daniel Cleary was a short side floater, through traffic, that I’m certain Quick would like to have back. Unless he was battling a serious case of nerves, Quick doesn’t look like much of a viable option (the sample size is small for sure but all to familiar). I’d still rather see Quick in the Kings’ net than Jason LaBarbera, whom Murray will most certainly put back in net for the next game. When that happens, the entire constituency of Kings fans will collectively cover our faces and sob. While I don’t think goaltending cost us tonight’s game, it could’ve won the game for us with a couple of timely stops. Hopefully Dean Lombardi is at least considering recalling Jonathan Bernier at this point, or investigating the possibility of a trade. Otherwise the season that looks a ton better than last year could get away from the team pretty fast.

Kings are in Columbus to face the overrat..I mean, Blue Jackets on Tuesday.

-JS

The Los Angeles Kings played well enough to beat the defending Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings. In the end, one critical mistake, a turnover by Denis Gauthier with under two minutes to play in the 3rd period that led to Valteri Filppula’s game tying goal, wound up costing them the game.

The Kings trailed early on a goal by Detroit’s Henrik Zetterberg but tied it later in the first period on heads up play by Oscar Moller, who picked up a loose puck after Red Wings’ goalie Chris Osgood made a save on Peter Harrold and lost sight of the biscuit. Moller buried it in the net uncontested.

Kyle Calder would give the Kings their first lead of the night on a chip shot rebound of an Anze Kopitar shot that beat Osgood high ot the blocker side. Detroit tied it on a 5 on 3 power play, with Marian Hossa undressing Sean O’Donnell and beating Jason LaBarbera between the blocker arm and body.

Alexander Frolov gave the Kings their second lead of the night on a goal that went off Nicklas Lidstrom’s skate and past Osgood. It was intended to be a pass to Wayne Simmonds, who likely would’ve buried it in the net but the puck hit the skate of Lidstrom and slid into the back of the net. The Kings played outstanding defensively throughout the game and did a solid job protecting the lead. Former Red Wing Kyle Quincey was particularly outstanding, as was Drew Doughty yet again, the latter making a couple of great diving plays on defense in the third period. The Kings looked as if they were about to hold off Detroit for a huge 3-2 win when Denis Gauthier took a pass from LaBarbera behind the net and instead of safely sending the puck off the glass and out of the zone, he attempted to pass up the middle of the ice. The pass was intercepted by Filppula and ended up in the back of the Kings net.

The biggest head scratcher for me is the fact that Terry Murray continues to leave Peter Harrold in the lineup. Yes, Tom Preissing made a critical mistake a week ago, but Harrold is grossly overmatched in the NHL. I grimaced almost every time Harrold had the puck in the Kings end. I think Preissing has been punished enough, it’s time to stop punishing the team by playing Harrold. Give Peter his rightful seat in the press box back.

Jason LaBarbera I thought played his best game of the season. None of the three goals in regulation could really be faulted to him, and he made a hell of a lot of big saves to keep the Kings ahead in the third period. As much as I give the guy a hard time for his penchant for the soft goal, I kept waiting for him to lay an egg tonight and he didn’t. I just wish I had reason to believe he was capable of consistently performing to the level he did tonight.

Once the game got to the shootout, you knew it was all over. Dustin Brown and Oscar Moller looked tentative for the Kings and Datsyuk, Zetterberg and Hossa against LaBarbera in a shootout…as well as Labarbera played tonight you just knew there was no prayer in hell unless one of the Detroit shooters missed the net. Unfortunately, none of them did.

As much as this shootout loss feels heartbreaking, there are a lot of positives to build on. Kings took it to one of the league’s best team’s tonight and deserved a better fate than they ended up with. Hopefully next time, Mr. Gauthier will use the boards rather than sending the puck up the middle of the ice.

Kings face the Vancouver Canucks Thursday night at Staples Center.