Changing head coaches in the season can mean very little and right now the Los Angeles Kings are seeing how little may mean for their club as they dropped a 3-1 decision to the visiting Minnesota Wild Thursday night.
Jake Muzzin scored early in the first period and then that was it for LA.
Zach Parise, Nino Niederreiter and Mikael Granlund struck for the Wild to erase the early advantage.
“I thought we were pretty smart with our puck management with the dangerous players that they have,” Parise said. “But we did a good job holding on, getting the puck out of our zone and not turning it over.”
The Wild improved to 9-4-2.
“Nino gets goals around the net. When he’s playing well he’s around the crease, he’s getting rebounds, he’s getting goals like that. For whatever reason, sometimes when you’re not scoring you drift away from the net, and I think that was the case with him,” Parise said of Niederreiter after the game.
LA dropped to 5-9-1 with the loss.
“I don’t think we played enough, obviously, in their zone,” Kings center Anze Kopitar said. “Maybe they came out a little slower in the first period and then played better as the game progressed. I thought we played a decent game but we need to capitalize on the chances.”
Devan Dubnyk made 27 saves to get the win.
[WATCH: All Wild vs. Kings highlights]
Jack Campbell made 21 saves in the loss.
“I definitely think we passed up some chances to shoot. If we put it to the net maybe we could have gotten some traffic and some rebounds, but we had our chances to win tonight and did not capitalize on the power plays,” LA head coach Willie Desjardins said after the loss.
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