Brownies, Hattricks, and Win Streaks. Go Kings Go!

By Emily Redenbach
- Tweet
- Pin It
Updated: March 7, 2020

Now the Kings decide to start playing hockey?! I can’t with this team y’all. In a typical afternoon snoozefest the score was low and the energy felt lower. For the first three or four minutes I wasn’t even sure the game had started. So when Anze Kopitar scores a juicy rebound at 5:16 I was pleasantly surprised. Reminiscent of Martinez’s Stanley Cup winning goal of 2014 he buried a rebound of Brown’s shot and yes it was as beautiful as you imagine. Along with Iafallo that line looked solid. But being the Kings it was a matter of minutes before they took a penalty and then kinda just stopped playing. It was a good kill, nice clears and Peterson looking confident, but after that the puck spent the entire second half of the period in the Kings zone. I can count on one hand the amount of times the Kings had control in the neutral zone and on the other the amount of times they had control at all. Their defense was pretty tight – MacDermid continued to impress with his physical play, blocking shots and making hits. But defense was all they were playing.

Sure enough 12 seconds into the third the score was tied. Because of course. A power play at 2:35 could have redeemed them but it was a pretty disappointing and disheartening attempt at special teams. I don’t know what woke them up but the Trevor Moore penalty starts 6:19 started a blaze. Adrian Kempe’s stunning interception and subsequent streak down the ice saw both MacDermid and Lizotte open – he chose Lizotte who was closer to the net and it was a good choice. He buried the shorthanded rebound with 43 seconds left in the penalty; 10 seconds after it ended Moore more than made up for being in the box in the first place by coming out and scoring a ridiculously angled top shelf goal. It was his third goal in thirteen games for the Kings, and was immediately followed by a very exciting power play, full of chances. So much so that I wasn’t even worried when 21 seconds after it ended the Kings were on the penalty kill again. They had all of the energy and momentum. It ultimately wouldn’t be converted again in the period, but after a -34 goal differential in the second kind of season we’d had some pretty amazing action already.

And if the second didn’t have enough action for you, bring on the third period! 91 seconds in the Kings had a power play. Next thing you know Dustin Brown is scoring his first of three, a appropriate pay off since his play was the only thing keeping the puck in play on the sequence leading up to it. 4 minutes in he executed a messy rebound of a perfect Hutton shot, practically falling over himself to do so. Less than a minute later we were back to a two goal lead with a goal Petersen should have had and some sloppy D, but it was still looking good for the Kings. With 9:03 remaining MacDermid, who was quite the force all evening, drew a penalty, which did little more than waste two minutes, but with a two goal lead to sit on that’s fine, right? Uh, nope. With 4:25 left it became a one goal game, and that’s just enough tome to screw it up. It was exactly what I’d worried about when it was clear they weren’t going to do anything with the power play. Half a period is a long time to just keep swimming. Enter Dustin Brown. Again. So clutch. (His 299th career goal.) With an absolutely sick puck drag, backhand to forehand move around the goalie and in right before the post. From there the empty net was inevitable, hats were thrown, there was less than 90 seconds left the game was on the bag. So Gabe Vilardi didn’t have to score his second NHL goal, per say, but it was nice that he did! He’d been pretty quiet all day but it was a nice snipe that gave the Kings their 7th of the game. You know who wasn’t quiet? Anze Kopitar, who notched his season over 60 points.

“I thought our penalty kill again was outstanding,” Coach McLellan said. “We checked pretty well, got a little bit sloppy around our net there in the third, but for the most part it was a pretty good team game, so I’m starting to sound repetitive as a coach after a lot of games, which is a good thing. That means we’re finding some consistency, we’re doing some things right. We’re not cheating a lot to win, we’re winning the right way. It means we’re moving the needle forward.”

There hasn’t been this much excitement in Staples Center in years. It was Brown’s 6th career hattrick, his second against the Wild, and the Kings fifth win in a row, having gone 8-2-1 in the last 11. “Once you kind of get through the deadline as a player,” Brown said, “as a group of players, you see teams start to play a little better after, regardless of their situation. Guys have been able to relax a little bit, in a good way, and focus on what we want to do. I think we’ve been well prepared and executed really well in our systems and that can snowball into everyone feeling good and playing better.” Are they the Blues of last year, gaining momentum after the trade deadline and finally getting the hang of the new coaches structure to surge to a Stanley Cup Final? (Or the Kings of 2012 for that matter?) “We are able to play a well-structured game so when mistakes are made, we’re there to cover it up,” McLellan said. “The guys wearing those big fluffy pads in the goal crease have really helped us out in that scenario. We’ve found timely scoring. We probably had some games like this early in the year where we didn’t put the puck in the net, and eventually it cost you. Tonight, we got the goals, and we’ll take them.” Or will their improved production plateau? Tune in Monday against Colorado to find out.