Kings Still Entertaining At Least in 4-3 OT Win

Even though our Los Angeles Kings won this game in overtime 4-3, I don’t even know what to do with this team any more? I really don’t? They do make their games eventful, that’s for sure. They were just slayed by the Hawks last game, so it was refreshing to see them not only score the first goal, but score the second too! Maybe they’ve gotten past those first 10 minute blues? And thanks to Kyle Clifford. Don’t sound so shocked – I find him a highly underrated player, but even I was surprised at the prettiness of his goal. Tyler Toffoli (who was clearly smarting from being benched last game) and Blake Lizzote (who’s easily one of my favorite new players) set up Clifford for one of the most beautiful goals I’ve ever seen, elegant, slick and sneaky. Dustin Brown and Matt Roy followed up with another goal at 4:29, and for a second it looked like they’d forced Hawk’s goalie, Corey Crawford off the ice already. Less than five minutes in the Kings had accomplished 2 goals on 5 shots. (It turns out Crawford was only off for 5:18 in which Lehner saved 5 shots on goal then came back after concussion protocol cleared him for play again.) A delay of game penalty from the Hawks made it look like everything would come up Kings, but their special teams were still letting them down. Their power play less so than their penalty kill – in the first 8 minutes they had 10 shots on goal yet within 17 seconds of taking a penalty the Hawks had halved their deficit. After letting in 4 power play goals last game and then spending literally an entire practice on the penalty kill, I was hoping for a little more than that. We got it from our goalie, Jack Campbell, who made a series of spectacular saves, including a dazzling looking scissor kick type thing, then gave up one of the dumbest goals I’ve ever seen. Yep, despite outshooting them almost by double, the score was tied. Stop me if you’re heard this story before.

The Kings started the second period with almost a full power play, but of course they didn’t do much with. In fact they didn’t do much of anything in the second. Campbell actually had to do some work, some quite scary looking work actually, however they rebounded with spectacular o-zone time in which they accomplished a full shift change without leaving the zone and kept control for another two or three shifts. Two more power plays went nowhere, and despite quite a few ‘how did that not go in?!?’ moments, the only thing the Kings did in the second period was increase their shot total. (17 shots to 12 in the first, 18-8 in the second and 10 to 4 in the third, which makes their final tally of 3-3 even more ridiculous.) 5 minutes into the third they had doubled the Hawks shot total 40-20 still with nothing to show for it, until Michael Amadio – a healthy scratch last game – finally broke through 12:37 into the frame. My favorite, Dustin Brown did all the work, hustling through a couple of Hawks, keeping control of the puck in difficult circumstances, and finally making a cross crease pass to Amadio who was in the perfect position to sneak it by an open Crawford. He couldn’t follow up with the insurance goal, whiffing on the next chance and I just had a feeling the Kings were going to regret it. Yeah I hate being right sometimes. With 5 minutes to go I thought there was just enough time to mess it up. With 2:48 to go the Hawks took their time out and pulled Crawford, and I thought ‘oh dear, this is essentially a power play we are so screwed.’ And sure enough, 6-on-5 goal from Toews, Kane and Keith. So to overtime we went, in which there were several more ‘how did that not go in?!?’ moments, along with several ‘what is happening?’ moments, especially when Kopitar, Doughty and Brown iced the puck after a whole minute and were totally gassed. But the most entertaining moment of the game came in OT, so I can’t really complain – Toffoli on one of his many breakaways had the most ridiculous ‘how did that not go in’ moment ever and Doughty snuck behind Crawford from behind the net to snap it in. Really picture it – the visual was hilarious.