Toffoli Makes History as Kings Win Outdoors in Colorado

By Jeff Duarte
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Updated: February 16, 2020

(Featured photo : cbc.ca)

If this is Tyler Toffoli’s last great moment as a Los Angeles King, he sure did it in style. At 6,621 feet above sea level, and in front of 43,574 fans (including many Kings’ fans and good friends of mine, including our very own Emily Redenbach, the Incredible Trasi Starr, 9th Degree Blackbelt in Photoshopping, David Villa and the adorable mother and daughter travelling duo of Bonnie and Avery), at Falcon Stadium of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, Toffoli became the first player in NHL history to score a hat-trick in an outdoor game, (both heritage classic and stadium series), to help his Kings defeat the Colorado Avalanche, 3-1.

Toffoli, at 27 years old, and an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season, has been a hot trade candidate of late with the upcoming NHL trade deadline coming fast on Monday, February 24th. After exploding into the NHL as a part of “That ’70’s Line” with Jeff Carter and Tanner Pearson, helping the Kings win their second Stanley Cup in three seasons, and scoring 31 goals and 58 points in 2015-16, Toffoli has been underwhelming and underachieving since then. Last season he only scored 13 goals and 34 points in a full 82 game season. Not good. To be fair, the whole Kings’ team hasn’t been any good in some time, but someone of Toffoli’s age, and experience, should have been able to make a greater impact. Like he did in this game, scoring his 16th, 17th, and 18th goals of the season. If Toffoli is to be traded soon, at least he’s going out with a bang.

After some opening game festivities, including the players being escorted by a parade of military soldiers and cadets (some with red lightsabers?), being led by a 107 year old World War II and Korean War veteran, (respect), and the ceremonial puck drop by the determined Grizzly the military dog, (after a rough start, good ‘ole Grizzly didn’t give up and got the mission accomplished), the game got off to even a rougher start for the Kings as Colorado blasted the net with 15 shots in the first period, with 4 or 5 of them in the first minute alone! Luckily, Jonathan Quick was on top of things and in classic Quick fashion, he kept his teammates in the game.

(Jonathan Quick making some spectacular saves that even the F-16 Fighter Jet in the background seems impressed! – Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

That helped as the Kings were able to score the first goal of the game at 14:01, when Toffoli banked in a rebound after the puck hit the post from an Alex Iafallo tip in off of a shot from Joakim Ryan, making it 1-0 Los Angeles. It was almost 2-0 before the end of the first period, when Adrian Kempe made a rush, and almost had a complete breakaway, but was slashed twice by the Av’s defenseman, the second one was right on Kempe’s glove, but no call was made by the referees.

In the second period, the Av’s kept coming, and were finally able to get one past Quick, when a Benny Hill type scenario happened, (just think of this goal with the Benny Hill theme song playing) …

… when the Kings couldn’t clear the zone with the puck bouncing everywhere, and Quick got tangled with an Av’s player, separating Quick from his goalie stick. When Quick went to reach for it to pick it up, Samuel Girard was able to time his shot just as Quick bent forward for the stick, and score his 3rd of the season, with only 42 seconds or so to end the period. That is so Kings.

A strange accident then happened early in the 3rd period, when Austin Wagner finally turned on his jets, and almost scored when the puck hit the post, (Wagner almost scoring is a strange accident indeed, but not the one I meant), but just as he skated by, Av’s goaltender Phillip Grubaurer was steamrolled by his own defenseman Ian Cole. (Whoops!) Grubaurer was injured on the play and had to be replaced by back-up goalie, Pavel Francouz,

(43,000 plus fans watch on as the Kings battle the Avalanche. Photo : Denverpost)

The rest of the game, as all of these outdoor games tend to do, started resembling a game of shinny, but with less than a minute to go before overtime, Toffoli struck again, and then again to complete his historic hat-trick and give the Kings a 3-1 victory! Jonathan Quick made 32 saves, getting his 321st regular season victory of his career. Captain Anze Kopitar and Iafallo, both had 2 assists. (Iafallo also make a sick leap into the air so he wouldn’t block a shot from Toffoli. Good thing he did, because that shot became the game winning goal!)

This gave the Kings their second win in a row, and a 3-1 overall record in outdoor games, 2-1 in the regular season, (the first ever outdoor game in NHL history, was between the Kings and the New York Rangers in Vegas back in 1991. The Kings won that one 5-2).