Los Angeles Kings right wing Marian Gaborik, middle, battles…
Advertisement
Key play: Nick Shore scored with 1:39 remaining in the game to give the Kings a 4-3 victory Saturday over the Edmonton Oilers at Staples Center.
Drew Doughty played in his 541st game on Saturday night, tying Sean O’Donnell for fifth on the Kings all-time games played list among defensemen.
“It’s tough on everybody”, Edmonton coach Todd McLellan said.
The Oilers were again pressuring the Kings when Anton Lander took an offensive zone penalty against Dustin Brown.
Nugent-Hopkins has collected 14 points in 17 games this season, putting him six behind Taylor Hall for first on the team.
Carter, who has seven goals and seven assists in his last 11 games, has also been instrumental to the Kings’ dominance in this series.
Hall, Draisaitl, Purcell, and Klefbom all had multiple point nights. “I just tried to follow it up and luckily it went in”. He beat Cam Talbot from a bad angle after a turnover by Andrej Sekera to make it 1-0 LA.
“We actually worked on our forecheck in practice the other day”. “We were able to generate pucks to the net and it worked out for us”.
That would hold up until Tanner Pearson roofed one over Talbot at 18:56 to give his team a 2-0 lead heading into the first intermission. But Pearson got the rebound and shook off a check by Eric Gyrba before beating Talbot to the glove side from 25 feet out. “But as the game went on, we had control of the play. We definitely played well enough to win”.
Jonathan Quick has been shaky lately, going 1-3-0 with a 2.80 GAA in four starts this month, but is 8-0-1 with a 1.53 GAA in his last nine starts versus Edmonton.
The Kings missed the 2015 playoffs, just one year after winning the Stanley Cup – for a host of reasons – but ultimately because there were too many stretches where they let points get away. “They’re a young, fast team and we let them back in the game”.
NOTES: A moment of silence was observed for the victims of Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris….
The Pacific Division-leading Los Angeles Kings are receiving strong play from their special teams but are struggling to string together victories. Last season, Edmonton was 5-7 in shotouts and Los Angeles was 2-8….
Advertisement
Anze Kopitar became the eighth player in Kings franchise history to appear in 700 games for Los Angeles.
