Kings Scrape Out Another Home Win Thanks to Campbell

By Emily Redenbach
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Updated: December 1, 2019

Let’s just go ahead and pretend that game against the Sharks after thanksgiving didn’t happen, cool? One day the Kings will figure out how to be as good on the road as they are at home. Because they can be very good at home. After all they’ve beat the red hot Oilers, Vegas, the Islanders… yet on the road they’re 3-11-1. Tonight, however, their opponent travelled from the Central Division – where they’re currently ranked 2nd – to get beat. I almost felt bad for them. Almost.

In typical LA Kings fashion they dominated the shot totals. In fact in two meetings the Kings have outshot them 40-11 in the first period alone. And this was no different, except they managed to convert some of them into goals! Joakim Ryan, scoring his first as a King, took advantage of a nifty Dustin Brown pass to snipe one past Brossoit 7:34 in, though I was actually surprised Jeff Carter or Tyler Toffoli didn’t get the honor of first goal. Every line tonight had chances, and that’s not something I can say very often. The second goal came less than 5 minutes later from after a fairly dumb sequence in which Kyle Clifford accidentally blocked his own players shot. But Paul LaDue picked it up along the boards, got it out to Trevor Lewis; he shot and Prokhorkin lifted the rebound sneakily up and over Brossoit’s glove hand. Both Nikolai Prokhorkin and Paul LaDue were missing from the lineup last game. It seemed everyone was taking issues with the Sharks game, because there were second, third, fourth chances and no one was giving up on the puck. There were chances from every line, good chances, and come the third period the Kings were going to wish they’d taken more advantage of them.

As the shots piled up for the Jets in the second period, it was clear that a different Kings team had come out from the intermission. They were sloppier, didn’t have the dominance, and rarely had offensive zone time. At 8:05, the first penalty of the game came from a scrum in front of the Kings net and Carter was called for hooking. It was a dangerous scrum – Jack Campbell tried a few poke checks but seemed a little unstable, and this time it was the Jets who were getting the second, third, fourth chances. So after their third zone entry on the penalty kill was pretty sustained, it was getting just slightly nerve-racking. Otherwise a solid kill, though it was followed up by another hooking penalty for the exact same situation – if the Kings could stop panicking any time there was even remotely a pack of people by Campbell that would be great. But it was telling of the period. The Jets outshot the Kings 16-8 and it was really only Campbell keeping them contained.

By the time the shots had evened up it was clear the first period Kings, with their structure and tenacity, was the anomaly, and the Jets were in fact the superior team. 31 seconds in, the Kings took their third unnecessary penalty of the game, and from then on it was just a matter of time before one of their many shots went in. Campbell, who had been quite solid all game actually, lunged too far out of position at 4:18, allowing a big, fat rebound from Rsolovic to make it a one goal game. And like the second period, Kings were being outshot by double. They weren’t in the game so much as playing keep away long enough to keep the win. Which they only did because Campbell made a spectacular save with two seconds to go.

“Yeah, I knew [the time remaining],” he said, “because I looked up to see when the puck was on the glove-side wall. We were eating it, and I kind of looked really quickly, just in case of a whistle or if I have to shoot it out or whatever. So I saw there were 6 seconds and then by the time it squirted over to Scheif, I was like, ‘OK, I don’t think he has time to make a backdoor play,’ so I tried to just be patient. I know he’s a skilled guy, but I was just fortunate to make the save.” Not the most convincing of wins, but at this point we’ll take anything.

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