Kings Best Ducks in Second Freeway Faceoff

Some days I think the Freeway Face-off will kill me. It’s just so much more stressful than other rivalries. It feels so much sweeter to beat the Ducks, so much worse to lose to them, and so much heightened emotion when anything happens on the ice.

The first thing I noticed about the lineup was that Kurtis MacDermid was back in the line up at the expense of Christian Folin. Smart move, though I, as MacDermid is a very physical presence and can put on the big hits. Sure enough, the first fight of the game came 1:53 into the game and MacDermid just pummeled the guy. It was a necessary momentum shift the play had been entirely in the Kings defensive zone. Unfortunately, the momentum swung for only a few plays then ended back up in the Kings zone again. Cue Fantenberg: his fight was much less inspiring, lasting only 3 hits then he went down. But a penalty box full of players wasn’t a surprising happenstance in the Freeway Faceoff. It was not even 5 minutes in and the tone had been set. 21 in Orange was the first Duck to go to the box unaccompanied by a respective King; the offense for the first 3/4 was fantastic. Lots of tight passes, Grade A chances and effort to keep the puck in play in their zone. That is until Andy Andreoff picked his own fight, got stunned by the first hit, fell and headed back down to the locker room, instead of setting up a play he instead distracted from the momentum and sure enough, the play following down the other end the Ducks found the back of the net. While most of the Kings were focusing on a potential wraparound attempt from Perry, Ritchie was parked out front and dished the puck to Jonathan Quick‘s open left side. The first period wasn’t even halfway done. The second half of it was considerably less exciting as we got a rendition of the past few games (in which the Kings were 1-6-1) instead of their fabulous comeback form. A second power play did little for their chances. They were lucky to leave the first down by only one with the puck management being what it was.

Andreoff didn’t return to the game following his ‘fight’ in the first period, and it was announced during the second that he wouldn’t. So with a shortened bench, I suppose it wasn’t surprising that it took almost five minutes for the Kings to generate any offensive chances. No, wait, it was the way they were playing that made that unsurprising. They were being dominated by the Ducks and could barely lay a stick on the puck. When they did they couldn’t get any kind of cycle going. An extended shift five minutes in proved to be frustrating; their first good chance of the period foiled by blocked shots and too much traffic at the net. It seemed like there just want to send any space to get the puck close to even the blue paint. The plays that followed were much of the same, and only thanks to Quick did the Kings stay afloat. With 2:40 remaining MacDermid gave them a chance to prove how good the penalty kill is; excellent actually. The last 30 seconds had the Kings in possession the whole time, scaring the Ducks into a hooking penalty themselves with 28.1 seconds left in the period.

The remainder of the power play was exactly why I don’t like split power plays; any chemistry or momentum the Kings could have gotten was reset at the beginning, losing valuable time. Once again they couldn’t get anything together. No cycles, sloppy puck management, bad neutral zone turnovers… The whole period was a microcosm of every game they had lost in the last stretch. Quick was being his usual Jedi-master self, keeping the Kings with a chance to fight back. “That was typical [Jonathan Quick] game,” said Brown, “…which is probably above average for most goalies.” The offense wasn’t giving him any breaks though, unable to connect to anything useful and spending more time cycling around the back of the net than the front of it. (Perhaps after that particular play hasn’t worked oh say 40 or 50 times, try something new?) Getting desperate, they pulled Quick with 1:42 remaining. It took Brown 10 seconds. Literally. 10 seconds and some hustle at the net, unceasing determination and some fast hands Brown on the wraparound buried his second chance by lifting it over Miller’s glove side while he was sprawled on the ground. Phew! To overtime, we shall go. As far as eventful overtimes go, this wasn’t really one of them. Brown drew a penalty when he was struck in the face by a high stick but even then the Kings couldn’t capitalize. They went from wanting more extra space (I swear the Ducks had 50 players blocking shots at any given time, not 5) to spending too much time relishing it. A shootout was also in the cards it seemed. Perhaps to throw off Miller or perhaps just because Stevens could, the Kings lineup of players was, uh, unusual. Jokinen and Brodzinski led the Kings off, so not your usual players. They failed to score, but Corey Perry was, leaving it up to Kopitar to keep the Kings in it, which he miraculously did. Quick stopped Fowler and the Kings hopes rested on Trevor Lewis.

Trevor freaking Lewis guys. Who shines in so many places, scoring not usually one of them, won the game for the Kings. Quick stopping Roy sealed the deal, and there was much celebration in the land. Feels so good beating some teams, doesn’t it?