FINAL – Kings 1, Coyotes 2 (SO) – Iafallo, Lemieux, McLellan

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• News post

• Zach Dooley

The LA Kings extended their point streak to five games, but fell short of their fifth consecutive victory, with a 2-1 shootout defeat on Friday evening in Arizona.

• Alex Iafallo
• Jonathan Quick
• Brendan Lemieux

• Todd McLellan

# Alex Iafallo

For sure, definitely, you know it was a good point that we needed. Obviously wanted the two points, to get a win, but looking at positive, we did get a point going into the break, so halfway. It’s good for us to look up.

Yeah, definitely, a lot of kills and a lot of power plays. At that point, you’ve got to try to get momentum from either one, either the PK or the power play. We tried to do that and it was pretty even throughout the whole match.

I was just trying to shoot the puck to be honest, a good screen. We just talked about it before, [Sean Durzi] made a nice pass and I just had to shoot in there. Just trying to get shots to the net………[I’ve been] working on getting the shot off quicker, not such a high slap shot, just more of a lower shot, get the puck to the net faster.

Yeah, for sure. [Jonathan Quick] had a hell of a game, he made a lot of huge saves for us. We gave him a lot of chances that we shouldn’t have and he made some huge saves. We owed it to him and it was a huge point for us.

# Brendan Lemieux

As a team, we started off slow and had some penalty issues, which doesn’t set our game and style up well. I thought we got our footing under us and just couldn’t capitalize. Personally, it’s obviously tough coming back after being away for the last little bit. Nice to be on the bench instead of watching and rehabbing and hope to build off this after the break.

# Todd McLellan

I thought it was a gutsy point or by our team. Gas tanks were running low and they checked very well, it was a gutsy, gutsy [effort] by our team. [Jonathan Quick] played well, there’s a lot of clogging up of the neutral zone by both teams, wasn’t a lot of free play. Penalties affected our start, or at least our first period, the last thing we needed to do after basically playing three lines yesterday was play six players for five minutes straight and that’s what happened today, but penalties played a big part. I thought in the second and third, we settled in. It’s a lot of things we wanted to do, but just couldn’t find the net.

It all goes together. Our group owed [Jonathan Quick] a good, honest effort, a checking effort, an effort with a conscience and I thought we got that today. In return, I thought he paid back the guys with some pretty big and timely saves. Not a lot of them, but timely ones when we needed them.

Travel. There’s so many games and a lot of referees couldn’t get where they were going. I thought Kyle Bremen did a good job, it’s a hard thing for officials to do, is to change their routine and their positioning. We’re always going whine and [complain] about calls here and there, but he did an admirable job.

On the 5-on-3, I think we can adjust a little bit and even do a better job there, but they scored quite quickly and still had a full minute and 45 or whatever it was left, so that kill in itself was important not to go down two in that situation. The succession that the penalty kill had to go to work in the first period really got tested and they did a good job.

Without [Arthur Kaliyev] here that hole needs to be filled and I’ve seen [Alex Iafallo] one time a lot of pucks in practice, I think he’s got that skill set, he fits that spot pretty good. Tough go for him over the last few months, trying to get his game back, but he’s starting to finally look polished up and I’m sure it’s starting to feel better. We’re lucky to have him.

It’s important to get something from a game any time you can. Three games in four nights, we overplayed probably some players, fell behind. The fact that we came back, I think it was a character [performance], I keep going back to that. These games, pre and post All-Star break, Christmas, they’re hard ones to play. A lot of times they can be blowouts, one team just takes off and the other team is done. I was happy the way the guys dug in.