The loss of Jonathan Quick in the season’s opening night loss if now being felt as expected.
On Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Kings visited the Minnesota Wild and promptly lost, 6-3.
Six different Wild players scored in the second straight win for Minnesota.
“There’s a lot of factors to the 0-3 start,” Kings captain Anze Kopitar said. “We just have to be better. That’s the bottom line. … We’re just not playing good enough hockey now. We’re going to have to come back to work and clean it up. Giving up four and six goals, that’s just not going to cut it. You don’t have to be a scientist to figure it out. Cut that down and go from there.”
Nino Niederreiter and Jason Pominville scored in the first period to take a 2-1 lead into the intermission after Tanner Pearson had given the Kings an early 1-0 lead.
“[The Kings] must’ve been pretty frustrated after the first period, I think,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. “They hit four posts and they go in losing in a period they should’ve won. Like I told the players, not every game can be a Picasso. We found a way. We weren’t great tonight, but we found a way to win. The bottom line is, this league is really tough to win games, and so when we can win games whatever the way they are, however we do it, it’s a win.”
Charlie Coyle, Mikko Koivu and Teemu Pulkkinen scored in the middle frame to put distance between the two clubs at 5-1 after forty minutes.
Dwight King scored in the third and Pearson added a second goal to give the Kings some reason to look forward.
“I said it when (goalie) Jonathan [Quick] got hurt. There’s not one thing I can do about it or anyone can do about it,” Kings head coach Darryl Sutter said. “I expect the guys who are in there to play as well as they can, and if they play as well as they can, that’s good. That’s all you can do. That’s what you do, right?”
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