The Toronto Maple Leafs were looking to escape the bright lights of the media cameras and hit the road to find their game. They did not find it in Los Angeles, where the Kings’ Martin Jones stopped 19 shots for a 2-0 shutout win.
“We did a good job checking all night,” Jones said. “The penalty kill was really good for us when we needed it, and the guys did a really good job around the net. Put those things together and we’re a tough team to beat.”
Nineteen shots. At time when the Leafs are in danger of becoming irrelevant in the eastern conference playoff race they managed 19 shots on goal. And this was against a team with its own struggles having started off a seven-game homestand 0-1-2.
Anze Kopitar scored with just 37 seconds ticked off the clock in the first period to stake the Kings to an early 1-0 lead. They did not score again until Marian Gaborik scored in an empty net at 19:00 of the third.
“Well, that’s how we’re going to have to play,” Kings coach Darryl Sutter said. “We’ve got some goals out of our lineup, so we’re going to have to play that way, for sure.”
The Leafs did play a decent defensive game in limiting the Kings to 20 shots on goal.
“We can’t really play much better on the road,” center Nazem Kadri said. “That’s a difficult team to up against, and it’s a difficult building to go into.”
Former Kings goalie Jonathan Bernier made 19 saves of his own, in the loss.
“We’ll take that loss because I thought we deserved better,” Bernier said. “We had some scoring chance[s], especially at the end with our power play. You keep a team like that under 20 shots, most of the time you’re going to end up on the good side of the game.”
Deserving better and actually earning a win are two different issues and the Leafs are not responding nearly well enough to the firing of their head coach Randy Carlyle.
“It’s disappointing we can’t capitalize,” Leafs interim coach Peter Horachek said. “Our power play didn’t score a goal [when] maybe we needed it to. You’ve got to take some solace in of the fact that their shots and chances were lower, and we think that we’re going to be able to score goals going forward.”
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