Sharks eat into Kings divisional lead

The Kings were honoring first responders from the San Bernardino tragedy a few weeks ago, so the game began late. The Kings didn’t. That 70’s Line scored on the second shot of the game, 1:40 into it. Jeff Carter won the faceoff, got it to Tanner Pearson, who poked it away to an open Toffoli in the slot, who showed none of the bromance feelings for Jones when he wristed is straight past him. Kings up 1-0 against sushi. Kings fans rejoice! It’s like a Christmas miracle! Now to hold onto that early lead…

Okay, how about another goal? Trevor Lewis obliges. Less than 3 minutes of play later. On the sickest deflection I’ve seen in awhile, he takes Dustin Brown’s shot and redirects it past Jones. 2-0! The Kings are dominating! Of course this is going to end so well. The Sharks had other plans. Joe Thornton opened up the scoring for them at 12:12 and the Kings didn’t like it. 43 seconds later Trevor Lewis and Tommy Wingels got into it along the boards and the Kings ended up on the power play when Wingles got the double minor for it. Little resulted but the Kings came out of the first period tripping the Sharks shots on goal, doubling their hits and doubling their score.

It didn’t take long for the Kings to find their way into the penalty box once the second period opened up. 1:44 in Brayden McNabb for hooking, and at 5:22 Mersch took the box for a bench minor too many men on the ice. It’s an amateur penalty but thankfully the Kings don’t have an amateur PK (at least in this period.) In fact they seemed to have more shorthanded chances than the Sharks had power play chances. Things were all the Kings way. McNabb earned my nickname for him McSmash when he literally smashed a Sharks player through the boards. The board ended up in the audience’s lap. Awesome for most of the crowd; not so much for the people in that section.

The Kings next goal came at 17:48, setting up Toffoli for a hat trick (he wouldn’t be able to make that final goal though. To the disappointment of everyone except perhaps Jones.) It was a stunning goal. Toffoli creates the chance for Pearson to get a breakaway, which he does. Owing to Toffoli’s speed he was right there on Pearson’s wing when Pearson snapped the buck to him. Jones, who was set up for a Pearson shot, couldn’t slide back fast enough to stop Toffoli’s snapshot from the point. The crowd goes wild! 3-1 LA Kings!

Did the Kings go into the third period with a 2 goal lead? Or did they do exactly what you think they’d do and give up another goal almost instantaneously? Yep. They did the latter. Brent Burns less than a minute later (18:45 to be precise). Still, the Kings record when going into the third period leading was 13-1. The Sharks record for coming back in the third period was 2-10-1. So of course the next three goals were Sharks goals. The first two were Joe Pavelski, both power play goals and both within a couple minutes of each other. The first penalty was Christian Ehrhoff for high sticking at 6:02 (may or may not have been legit.) The announcer couldn’t even get through announcing the penalty before the Sharks scored. 6:06 was the official time. Then at 6:41 Milan Lucic was called for slashing against Burns. There are some calls that are just bad calls and this was one of them. Even Sharks fans agreed. Burns went down easy, Lucic went to the box, and Pavelski got the puck to the back of the net at 7:38.

Ugh. Suddenly the Kings only have 12:22 to get their lead back. Or at the very least, score a tying goal to take us to exhilarating 3-on-3 overtime. No such luck. The Kings had lost their chemistry. The Sharks had all the momentum and every reason to keep screwing with the Kings. They pulled Quick with 1:18 and the first thing the Sharks did was score the empty net goal. It took 8 seconds and the Kings hope was dashed completely. Despite outshooting them 36-23 the Kings fell in a divisional game they probably should have won.