In Edmonton Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Kings ended a three-game skid with a 5-2 thumping of the Oilers.
Anze Kopitar, Matt Greene, Trevor Lewis, Jeff Carter, and Kyle Clifford all scored for the Kings who find themselves back in the thick of the race for the playoffs.
“We weren’t happy about our effort in Winnipeg [a 5-2 loss on Sunday] and wanted to make sure we came out strong in the first period,” Kopitar said. “I thought we controlled the game fairly well off the start. We needed to manage the puck well. I thought we did a good job of that. At this time of the year and in the position we are in, we need the two points every night. A lot is going to depend on us. We don’t want to put our fate in any other team’s hands. We want to make sure we do our job. If we do, it should be good enough.”
Anze Kopitar had a goal and two assists in win over Oilers – File photo by Jack Lima
The Kings were in desperate need of breaking the skid and gaining points. With teams winning around them on Tuesday it might otherwise have meant falling back of the San Jose Sharks and Calgary Flames.
“We need points right now, we need to keep grinding. It was a good win,” Greene said. “We are on the road for a lot of March, so we have to make sure we are getting those points.”
Jonathan Quick made 21 saves for the Kings in the win while Ben Scrivens stopped 24 in the loss for the Oilers.
“I thought right from the first few shifts we had, we didn’t look ready, we didn’t look focused,” Oilers coach Todd Nelson said. “We wanted to keep a simple game plan and got away from that right away and that ended up costing us. There were some uncharacteristic things going on tonight from players who don’t normally do those things. It’s a game that will make for a good teaching video session.”
It is difficult to ready for games this late in the season after being an also-ran for so long.
“We got a couple of goal leads and were able to just play our game,” Kings coach Darryl Sutter said. “We got a couple of fortunate goals, but we also got a couple of goals by going to the net.”
Jonathan Quick made 21 saves in win over Oilers – file photo by Jack Lima
Luke Gazdic and Teddy Purcell scored for the Oilers.
“At the end of the day, our records shouldn’t matter,” Gazdic said. “They are the defending Stanley Cup champions and we treated them like that. We gave them a ton of respect early a ton of space and they let us know why they’re one of the best teams in the League. I thought we got better as we went along, but you can’t start that slow against anybody, let alone a team like that. We were just flat-footed and we can’t start that way.”
With games-in-hand on their competition, the Kings have a chance to gain some ground on the final playoff spot.
LA plays the Montreal Canadiens at the Staples Center Thursday.
You must be logged in to post a comment.