In Los Angeles, the Kings took a 5-1 lead in the first period on Saturday night, and then stood around and watched the Arizona Coyotes rally to tie the, 5-5.
The Kings needed a pair of skills goals to recover enough to get a 6-5 win.
“It just goes to show that we got a lot of work to do. The championship quality or caliber teams don’t do that,” Los Angeles coach Todd McLellan said.
The first period offensive outburst came from single markers from Anze Kopitar, Blake Lizotte, and Matt Roy
Kevin Fiala added a double in the first period for LA.
Jonathan Quick made 27 saves for the Kings win.
For Quick it was his 369th career NHL win, tied for third most for a US-born goalie, he is tied with Tom Barrasso.
“Bad first, learned from it. Good response for the next 40 (minutes), and I think we carry some momentum over to tomorrow [against the Columbus Blue Jackets],” Arizona forward Christian Fischer said.
The Coyotes dropped to 19-28-9. Arizona has an active eight-game point streak, 4-0-4.
Josh Brown scored in the first period for Arizona, his goal tied the game, 1-1, after Fiala had staked the Kings to an early 1-0 lead.
“I think that was a big wake-up call for our team,” Fischer said. “If we’re not on top of the puck, aggressive, playing the way we have to, we’ll get embarrassed just like we did.”
The Kings were bailed out in the skills portion of the game on strikes by Gabriel Vilardi and Adrian Kempe.
“This lead tonight happened fast,” McLellan said. “It happened, bang, bang, bang, one after another. And then from that point on we got extremely casual. I’m not sure how we replicate that in practice. It has to come from within the locker room, and it didn’t.”
The Coyotes’ Clayton Keller, who hit for a double in the game, cut the lead to 5-2 in the middle frame off a 5-on-3 power play goal.
Keller’s second of the game came in the third for a 5-3 score.
“That’s who we are,” Arizona coach Andre Tourigny said of the comeback. “At the end of the day, that’s a good thing because we take a lot of pride in being that competitive and working that hard. … The boys really dug in and found a way.”
Travis Boyd trimmed the deficit to one, 5-4, just after the end of another power play, and Fischer tied it to force extra time and the skills at 7:50 of the third.
Karel Vejmelka got the start for the Coyotes and yielded all five LA goals in the first period. He was given the hook late i the frame after making nine saves.
Connor Ingram made 23 saves in relief.
You must be logged in to post a comment.