Kings ground Wings hopes of sweeping road trip

I don’t know what it is about the Red Wings and their fans but I thoroughly enjoy beating them and thoroughly loathe losing to them. They were playing game 5 of a 6 game road trip, and had won the first 4. The Kings history against the Red Wings hadn’t been good,  3-6-1 in their last 10 contests. Which only goes to show just how good the Kings are this season.

That’s not to say that the game wasn’t a battle the entire 60 minutes. 29 seconds in Anze Kopitar got a penalty. Yes you read that correctly; he didn’t draw one, he took one. It could have been an omen for the game. Instead exactly 30 seconds after he came out of the box he makes the play that gets the Kings on the board first! In a stunning breakaway where it seems like the whole 200 feet of ice is his, he streams down the center with Tyler Toffoli to his right, teases Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard to focus on him, swiftly and deftly passes the puck off to Toffoli who easily makes the shot hit home.

Things remained fairly even for the next 10-12 minutes, but swung definitively in the Red Wings favor late in the first. At 15:59 and 18:16 the Wings scored their two goals, taking the lead seemingly with ease. They kept it for most of the second period – despite the Kings outshooting Detroit 10-4. Finally the dam broke, and the Kings scored a power play goal that took only 7 seconds to complete. At 16:21 the Wings take the penalty, at 16:28 a goal resulted off the draw. Milan Lucic won the draw, got it to Jake Muzzin and then made his way to the net to screen Kopitar’s shot. That’s point 2 for Kopi. Keep counting, he ended the night with 4.

With 3.6 seconds remaining in the second, Jeff Carter drew a penalty. 1:28 into the third the Kings capitalized on it with the go ahead goal scored by none other than Jazz Hands Alec Martinez. Kopitar got the puck to Drew Doughty who fed him from the point where he slapped it past Howard for his 3rd game winning goal this season. (While it was a stunning GWG, Martinez scored my two favorite GWG’s of all time.) Detroit continued to put pressure on the Kings, not making a win easy. They pulled their goalie with 1:44 remaining, and had some good looks at scoring an equalizer, but again Kopitar came through big time. He finagled the puck out to the neutral zone where Dwight King found it. He outplayed a Red Wing there and skated alone to the empty net, where he scored with 53 seconds remaining. The Wings couldn’t come back from that, and the Kings celebrated remaining the clear leaders of the Pacific division.

Other noteworthy performances of the night: newbie (to the Kings at least, he is in his final season as a professional hockey player) Vincent Lecavalier won 13/16 face-offs. He won all 4 in the defensive zone, and 7/8 in the offensive. Toffoli and Doughty posted multi point games, Kopitar posted his second 4 point game this season (his previous being in Vancouver 12/28/14.) He has 15 points in 9 games (and still no contract extension weeps every Kings fan!) The Kings out-hit Detroit 31-19 and had half the amount of giveaways (16-8). Coming off a season riddled with issues the Kings seem determined to clean up every area of their game, and judging by the amount of things their doing right and the amount of ways they manage to keep winning, it’s working.

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