Kings Felled in Freeway Faceoff

Wow, do the Kings miss Drew Doughty. Defense was not their strong suit against the Ducks. Shooting wasn’t either, ending the game with 47 shots on goal and very little to show for it. “They were outshooting us,” Todd McClellan said, “11-2, I think, in the first seven or eight minutes. They were on their toes and we were on our heels, and we’re responsible for at least 50% of that. They’re responsible for the other share, and they were much better on their portion than we were.” Neither were face-offs – “For me,” said McClellan, “it’s the faceoff circle. When you drop the puck and two teams are ready, the gun goes off, who wants it, who doesn’t? What were we, eight-for-25, 26 in the first period alone? That tells a story.” Basically it was an all around sh*t show.

Like coach said, it was a slow start. It was all Ducks and unsurprising when they capitalized 5:43 in. Quick was busy, sliding all over the place and ultimately unable to stop all of the onslaught. Which continued after the goal, having many wondering if the Kings were actually going to show up and play hockey at any point. When they finally did and shots evened out, it still wasn’t the best hockey. Everything looked muddy; no clean, crisp passes. The shots clearly weren’t dangerous. They even went so far as to look clumsy. The effort that usually helps the Kings rise above such problems clearly wasn’t their either. With relief the first period ended, only to be showed up by the second period. The Kings had a -33 differential going into the game, and only served to make it worse. It didn’t help that the first shift was about 2 minutes long and during said shift Alec Martinez lost his stick and had to use Kopitar’s. So again unsurprisingly at 2:33 their differential became -34, and at 6:52 -35. In between those goals the Kings had a fairly abysmal power play; following the third goal they had a penalty kill – mercy! Kurtis MacDermid tried to get the team back in the game with a nice fist fight with Nicolas Deslauriers, and it almost worked. Their energy spiked, and the game became almost interesting. On a late power play, Tyler Toffoli even got the puck over the goal line! Of course the whistle had blown already so it was waved off, but after some review (seriously the Kings have to beg for goals now?) it was deemed a good goal. “Puck entering the net as the culmination of a continuous play where the result of the play was unaffected by any whistle blown by the Referee upon his losing sight of the puck,” was the rule sited.

The third period was more of the same. No penalties to speak of, but no play worth noting either. It was better than the first two periods, but not good enough to generate good enough chances. Sure, there were 47 shots on goal by the end of it. But in usual Kings style they weren’t snipes, they weren’t quality and unlike the usual Kings style there were not anywhere near enough net front presence rebound opportunities. With 3:20 remaining Quick was pulled; the Kings however spent more time defending the empty net than putting the puck in the other net. Not a game worth remembering.