FINAL - Kings 1, Kraken 4 - Clarke, Danault, McLellan - LA Kings Insider
# FINAL - Kings 1, Kraken 4 - Clarke, Danault, McLellan - LA Kings Insider
# Contributors
# Players
# Staff
# Summary
The Kings were unable to even their record on a season-opening, two-game homestand, with a 4-1 defeat against the Seattle Kraken.
# Notes and Quotes
# Phillip Danault
We have some work to do. We’re not playing a full 60 minutes, we’re sloppy with passes and the details and we have to capitalize as well. It’s not that we’re not trying, we tried really hard today, but it’s not enough. We’ve got to start better.
Obviously you want to get a win, get going and it’s not even just about winning, it’s about the team game. I don’t think we’re on point at all, we aren’t moving fast enough, or playing the way we should be.
It’s all around, it’s not somebody in particular, everyone has to step up their game. We have to pack our bags, go on the road and go into the war zone. We’ve got to get a win going and get back on track.
Yeah, definitely. I think this is going to be good for our team. We have a couple of new guys here, so this is going to be much needed.
# Todd McLellan
We played much better defensively than we did in game one. We kept a heavy, hard team to 16 shots on goal at even strength. Our penalty kill did a really good job in a lot of situations, I know we gave up a goal, but the 5-on-3 was real positive. You know, there are some things that we have to take from that game and look at it positively. The negative side, we’re a minute and a half in and we have a too many men on the ice penalty. Game management. Three o-zone penalties tonight, game management. It’s something we’ve been harping and harping on and those are essentially impossible situations to practice, so they’ve got to take care of it.
Little bit of both. They’re a scrappy team, they get in the way a lot, heavy, hard sticks, a lot of battles, a lot of crap coming out of the out of the bottles. There’s rarely anything clean when you play against them and when you do have the opportunity, I think we created more in the game, believe it or not, than what showed up on the scoreboard. The simple fact is, we didn’t want to shoot the puck, we wanted to be over-creative. I think of 2-on-1’s, I think of 3-on-1’s, I think we had almost a 4-on-1 and we didn’t get any shots off. It’s just too cute. When we’re playing well, I think you could kind of feel it in the third, we started to put some pressure on, we shot the puck, we got it back and got them out of position but a little too cute right now. We’re still trying to figure out who we are.
I think the answer to both of those is yes. Reflective of the score and not liking what we’re seeing there, combinations of players were a little bit flat, there wasn’t a lot going on. We haven’t shuffled the deck a lot, potentially could wake the group up a little bit by shuffling it and trying to find maybe a combination that that gave us more life.
You know, we dressed six defenseman tonight, I know he wasn’t six, pretty sure he wasn’t five and I don’t believe he was four either. So, that’s what I thought of him, I thought he had a real good night. He didn’t hurt us at all defensively, creative offensively. I’d like to see him shoot the puck a little bit because I think he’s got a great shot and he loves to pass but he had some real good looks at the net where he could have shot the puck.
Well, it’s a losing streak to start the season already, because we’re at two and we haven’t put one on the board yet, but it is early. As I said, we’re trying to figure out who we are, how do we want to play the game? For the media that was there this morning or yesterday, it doesn’t happen automatically, you get to recreate yourself every year. The reference point that we had after game one was last year, now we have six periods in the bag and much better defensively today. Gave up far fewer opportunities than we did against Vegas, but still many things to work on. We didn’t put the points in the bank, but as I mentioned earlier, there were positive things to build on.