FINAL – Kings 1, Canucks 4 – Kopitar, McLellan

Last updated Unknown Edit Source

• News post

• Zach Dooley

The LA Kings fell to 1-2-0 on their current road trip with a 4-1 defeat against the Vancouver Canucks on Friday evening at Rogers Arena.

• Anze Kopitar

• Todd McLellan

# Anze Kopitar

Yeah, I mean it was a lot more than just passing obviously. Bottom line is we didn’t play good enough to win tonight. Yeah, we had some chances and everything but way too loose in our zone and way too loose in our decision making, which lead to goals against.

It shouldn’t be. I mean, it’s something that, if anything, we should ride the wave and you know, be on the high coming into this game. Like I said, we just didn’t play good enough today.

We had some good looks, yeah, but it’s a matter of capitalizing. The bottom line is we’ve got to score goals and obviously not give up as many. There’s a new game tomorrow and we’ll try to correct it.

Just decision making. There were a couple of plays where we didn’t take care of the puck and it turned out to be in our net. We’ve got to correct that.

# Todd McLellan

That could be a good way of putting it. For me, and obviously we haven’t discussed it as a team, just quickly with the coaching staff, but I thought we had some good performances tonight and I thought we had some poor ones. For as much as you’d like to always keep your team together and not separate them, I thought there were some individuals that let us down tonight, rather than the group as a whole. Sometimes people play the game a certain way, it may not be the way you like it, it may be ugly, it may be grinding, it might not be cute but that’s the way you have to play. We had some that couldn’t accept that or didn’t want to and I believe that cost us. I think that’s probably what Kopi is getting at too, but in a different way.

I thought they were fine. They created chances they did some of the things that maybe some of the other lines didn’t do and they didn’t hurt us.

Well, Blake Lizotte had 10 last year and was injured. He’s a very competitive player, he shows up in games like this, he shows up every night in really. You know, it’s funny, when you have a player like that, that gives you every last ounce of everything he has, when he make a mistakes they’re much more livable than maybe the players that don’t quite get to that level. That’s why his teammates love him and that’s why it rubs off on teammates and it’s infectious if you will. I’m happy for him, every time we get to put him on the ice, I think he gives us everything he has.

No, I don’t think so. We were playing against a team that was coming home from a long road trip that had a plan and they stuck to it. They had 20 guys that were willing to play their plan and we didn’t have enough willing to play ours.