Tampa Bay Light Up Kings

With both teams excellent records, I expected a closer game between the Los Angeles Kings and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Each team went in with only 2 outright losses and 2 overtime losses, Tampa picking up their 12th win over The San Jose Sharks the previous evening in a 5-1 blowout. Jones let in 4 goals in the first period and I remember thinking “the Kings won’t do anything like that!” Hahaha oh, I was about to eat my words so hard.

Given that between them, Steven Stamkos (7, 21: 28) and Nikita Kucherov (15, 11: 26) headline the top line in the league, shutting them down wasn’t going to be an easy task. Drew Doughty seemed determined to show the Lightning that they made a mistake picking Stamkos over him that draft year and it ended up drawing the first penalty. The resulting power play was a portent of things to come, clearly, when they couldn’t connect on anything. The Lightning was clearly the faster team, capitalizing on the turnovers the Kings had been giving up all season long but this time making them pay for it. (It was a big blow for the Kings to have their fastest player Adrien Kempe out last minute.) Once that abysmal 2 minute was over Nick Dowd laid a huge hit on Mikhail Sergachev that Victor Hedman took offense to he made a go at Dowd but wouldn’t throw the gloves. Dowd and Hedman both ended up in the box for 2 minutes (and kudos to Dowd for the whole sequence.) The next sequence wasn’t as fun to watch for Kings fans – new fan favorite Alex Iafallo’s wraparound pass found an open Anze Kopitar (who’d been doubling upshifts when the face-off was in the defensive zone) but he was robbed point blank. The rebound ended up on Kucherov’s stick as his breakaway goal set the tone for the rest of the period. 34 seconds later Killorn made it 2-0 and 34 seconds after that Hedman made it 3-0. Why we left a guy like Hedman all alone to get off a wrister is beyond me. The Kings challenged for offsides; for their efforts, they got a delay of game penalty. Which the Lightning scored on. Seriously. Goal one came at 9:27 and by 11:29 they had four. On eight shots. Quick’s save percentage got better after that, but only because the Kings let a lot of shots slip by their defensemen to him.

Three minutes into the third Kucherov had another breakaway; this time Quick had his number, making three Grade A stops in a row. It helped set a slightly better tone, quickly deflated by a Jake Muzzin penalty. Followed quickly by some 4-on-4 – special teams got a bit of a workout for a lot of the second. Eight minutes in Doughty (gotta love the irony of 8 getting a penalty for 8 minutes at least) spent two minutes there, and I started to forget what a Kings shot on goal looked like. They only had six in the period; meanwhile, the Lightning had nineteen. They went from doubling the Kings shots (12 to 24) to outshooting them 12 to 31 during the power play. Finally, Kopitar got some pushback, beating Budaj clean, but unfortunately not the two posts. More penalties, from Alec Martinez and 1:25 into his Stamkos. Then. Finally. A King’s goal. From Toffoli, a sweet shot from the slot that beat Budaj stick side. Even he couldn’t bring himself to celebrate with too much energy though if that tells you anything about the way the game was going. In the McFlurry minute, Kopitar won the whole stadium free McFlurry’s thanks to a point-blank wrister (again stick side). The excitement lasted about 5 seconds as Toronto called to say the goal was waved off. Brown, who was doing what he does best, being pesky around the net, was apparently the reason that Budaj’s teammate fell on top of him. (He wasn’t and I’ll contend that to anyone who wants to get into it.)

Going into the third period down 4-2 would have been much easier to mount a comeback (the Kings being one of the best in the league with 3rd-period goals) but 4-1 made it just that much harder. In fact, the only highlight for at least half of the period was Chris Sutter’s return to the dance cam. It was a stunning return and even seemed to spur the Kings on – they’re second, well third but second, the goal came immediately after, when Oscar Fantenberg got his first NHL goal. But it was too little too late it seemed, the goal coming 8:39 in. A fifth goal from the Lightning 4 minutes later was the final nail in the King’s coffin. Originally waved off Toronto was quick to call again; indeed an overhead view showed that even though Quick fell on his back to stop the puck from going in, a second earlier it had actually crossed the goal line and popped back out. With 5:46 remaining the Kings got a penalty that wasn’t going to be able to do them any good, and with 2:55 remaining Quick was feeling the frustration we all were and got called for tripping. It was a mercy when the final buzzer finally rang.