Kings vs. Sharks Game 2: Too Little, Too Late

Welp, the LA Kings could be in trouble. Losing game 1 at home and losing defenseman Alec Martinez wasn’t ideal. But the areas for improvement were obvious and easy to fix. Stay out of the penalty box. Generate more shots on goal. Keep the defense sharp. Use the power play to your advantage. Keep hitting hard. Lessons the Kings still need to learn, it seems.

Marian Gaborik made his return after 9 weeks and 1 day of injured reserve, and proved any skeptics who thought perhaps he too was coming back to early wrong. His stick handling all game was a thing of beauty. Unfortunately the Sharks struck first, with an actually stunning goal from Joe Pavelski who’s shot from the point went straight past Jonathan Quick 3:37 into the contest. At 4:42 the parade to the penalty box began again. Kris Versteeg, who also played a strong game, drew a holding call on Chris Tierney. But seeing as the Kings power play is still lackluster nothing came from it. What they did learn from last game was how to keep the Sharks off the board during the penalty kill (the 4 on 5 version anyway), which was put to the test 7:55 into the first when Luke Schenn interfered with Tomas Hertl. It was a much better display, with timely clears that didn’t allow for any Sharks momentum.

Things stayed relatively even for most of the first period, until Roman Polak fell down next to Dwight King and that was called a penalty. During the penalty Tyler Toffoli got so feisty my attention turned to him doing something that made Joe Thornton back down from a fight and I have never been more impressed with him. Back where the puck was still in play Quick was making some great saves, and some overextending on his part gave Jake Muzzin and Luke Schenn a chance to make some great saves themselves. The disconcerting part however, was the Kings were held to only 5 shots on goal. Given that the Kings are best when they’re peppering a goalie with shots, only 5 wasn’t going to get the job done.

Entering the second period it was clear the Kings weren’t going to generate much more offense than they did in the first period, and clearly none of the shots were going to give Martin Jones pause. The turning point however, were some questionable calls at 8:14 on Toffoli and Milan Lucic, that gave the Sharks a 5-on-3 for two full minutes. Well, 30 seconds at least as Logan Couture beat Quick easily on his left while he was still overextended on his right stopping another Sharks shot. It was an obvious yet crushing goal for the Kings to give up. Tempers began to rise, if they hadn’t already. Jeff Carter almost got called for a penalty right after they scored which would have put the Kings back at a huge disadvantage. Thankfully he wasn’t and the remaining 1:30 was killed off easily, but the Kings didn’t look like a team who could bounce back. In fact they lost all composure and with it any chance to get the puck past Jones.

The refs did give us some make up calls, which the Kings could have used

San Jose Sharks goalie Martin Jones, right, stops a shot by Los Angeles Kings left-wing Milan Lucic during the second period of Game 2 in an NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs first-round series, Saturday, April 16, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

to their advantage – at 12:18 Matt Nieto went in for hooking, and 18:17 Nick Spaling for holding. But instead of grinding down and responding with some great shots, they played angry and desperate. They managed 9 shots but with Kyle Clifford out of the lineup the hitting was down and as that was the best part of the Kings game last time, the game was lacking high points. Jamie McBain did draw into the lineup instead of the injured Martinez, and according to Daryl Sutter, “I thought McBain was our best defenseman.” It was his first NHL playoff game and he played like he wanted to stay in the lineup.

Perhaps the best part of the third period was Kings mascot Bailey handing the referees some glasses when they stopped play and had to bring out the glass fixing guys (who did nothing) to make it look like they hadn’t stopped the momentum of the game for no reason. But the Sharks kept controlling the neutral zone and the Kings kept insisting on the dump and chase. (Which I’m all for when it means you’re grinding the other team down when you both try for the puck but not when they needed to set up good shots and weren’t actually fighting for the puck on the chase.) At 10:59 Doughty drew a tripping penalty on Nick Spaling (one of the only calls I agreed with), but 29 seconds into that Jeff Carter slashed Nieto, negating most of the power play time and allowing the Sharks to control the play even more.

Finally at 14:06 Melker Karlsson slashed Carter and during his time in the box the Kings peppered Jones with 7, maybe 8 shots in a hefty scuffle at the net, with 1 finally getting through. There were so many players heaped on each other I have no idea how they called the assists, but the final whack was from Vincent Lecavalier. It was a case of too little too late, as the Kings couldn’t generate any more chances that even scared Jones. The Sharks knew all they had to do was stop us from getting any offensive zone time, so they focused on that rather than trying to get any offense of their own, and it worked. The Kings did finally pull Quick but they Sharks didn’t give them a lot of chances. While bringing in Nick Shore instead of Andy Andreoff did help in the face-off circle (they won 41 to the Kings 27), the Kings won’t win games with 14 giveaways, shots that don’t get anywhere the net (28 blocked shots and definitely in the double digits of shots that went wide) and heavy penalty minutes. They play in San Jose Monday.

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