In Los Angeles, the Kings had their eight-game point streak snapped on Wednesday when Ilya Samsonov made 34 saves for the Washington Capitals in a 2-0 decision.
“I think that he’s looking for that game too, so it was nice for him to come in, back-to-back,” Washington head coach Peter Laviolette said of Samsonov, who improved to 5-0-1 this season in his second start in the past seven games. “And there was a lot of volume, especially in the first period. They were just from the outside. But that being said, you got to be dialed in and you got to be in your crease and on top of it. There’s a lot of action. There could be tips, it could be rebounds, so there’s a lot going on.”
The Kings dropped to 8-6-2.
“This game was a system battle,” the Kings’ Mikey Anderson said. “They’re a good structure team, we stuck to what we do, and at the end of the day they were the ones that found the bounces and capitalized. We had some chances, but that’s how it goes sometimes.”
The Caps’ Garnet Hathaway hit for two goals in the third period, for all the scoring the game.
“You always get judged by goals it seems, but, yeah, especially in the role that he plays sometimes, that’s not necessarily the factor that determines it for me. I thought he was playing good hockey,” Laviolette said. “But with the amount of offense that is out of the lineup right now, to have him contributing the way he is, is really, really important.”
His first strike came at 16:30 for the 1-0 lead.
His second was an empty-netter with less than two minutes on the clock.
Jonathan Quick made 36 saves in the LA loss.
“We’re not gonna go sit in the corner and suck our thumb over this one,” Anderson said. “You know, we did some good stuff. We’re certainly not satisfied with the outcome, but there’s parts of the game that I think were pretty good today. So we’ll build on that and take the next step.”
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