Entering Tuesday’s road game against the Washington Capitals, the Los Angeles Kings needed to break out of two bad streaks: opening the season with six straight losses, and going four straight games scoring exactly one goal. They took care of both of those.
The Kings scored five unanswered goals to overcome an early deficit for a 5-2 win, ending their status as the NHL’s status as the only team without a victory.
“Everybody’s happy,” Kings head coach Peter Laviolette said. “I mean, the guys have been working hard, it’s just, we haven’t been scoring goals, Tonight, we were able to capitalize.”
Despite the five-goal total, the Kings’ scoring came in spurts rather than being evenly distributed throughout the game. Though they fell behind 2-0 early, they got back in the game thanks to two goals in the final 33 seconds of the first period, including one from Artemi Panarin with roughly two seconds remaining.
“It’s a big shift,” said forward Adrian Kempe, who scored twice for his first two even-strength goals of the season. “Obviously, you’re down 2-0 and you score two in 30 seconds or whatever it was. That can shift momentum a lot. I think coming into the locker room after that, everybody kind of felt that now we go, and now we’ve got to step up and everybody’s got to play better because now we’re back to even. It was a good turning point for our team.”
Kempe and Panarin’s line, centered by new first-line center Alex Laferriere, combined for seven total points in the matchup.
The Kings pulled away with three goals in the final 13 minutes of the third period, highlighted by a phenomenal unassisted, coast-to-coast effort from defenseman Erik Gustafsson for what proved to be the game-winning goal.
“That’s a real highlight-type play,” Laviolette said. “It’s kind of old school, you go back and wheel it out of your own end, split everything up the middle and get behind and then to finish it off too. He was running out of real estate, so it was nice to see the finish on it as well. Obviously, a big goal at the time.”
In the time when they weren’t scoring, the Kings relied on Darcy Kuemper, who played his best game of the season so far. Despite entering the contest with generally poor numbers, he made 30 saves, including several excellent stops in all three periods to keep the Kings close, tied or in the lead.
“I thought that our goaltender was terrific tonight. Darcy played great for us,” Laviolette said. “They got a lot of talent on the other side there, so he had to make big saves and he did.”
At the start of a lengthy road trip, mostly in the Eastern Time Zone, the Kings finally have a win, and now hope to use the momentum from this game for the rest of the trip and their eventual return home.
“I think we’ve been playing a lot better than our record,” Kuemper said. “[We’ve been] just a little snakebitten. We’ve been playing a lot of really good teams, so it’s felt like our game’s been building each and every game, and finally we were rewarded.”
The Kings continue their road trip on Thursday against the New York Islanders.
Kings forward Quinton Byfield, who has been the first-line center for most of the season and started tonight on the second line, was limited to 2:44 of ice time — all in the first period — due to an upper-body injury. Laviolette stated that the Kings will gain clarification on his status with an evaluation tomorrow morning.