FINAL - Kings 3, Golden Knights 4 - Vilardi, Kopitar, McLellan - LA Kings Insider
# FINAL - Kings 3, Golden Knights 4 - Vilardi, Kopitar, McLellan - LA Kings Insider
# Contributors
# Players
# Staff
# Summary
The LA Kings started off the regular season with a a difficult defeat, by a 4-3 final against the Vegas Golden Knights.
# Notes and Quotes
- Kings Goal Scorers
# Anze Kopitar
It’s certainly a loss that’s tough to swallow right now, because there were a couple of goals that were clearly off of our mistakes. Positives were that we scored a power-play goal, we battled back a couple of times, especially in the third. I’m sure we’re going to look at some stuff to improve on and keep building on it.
Yeah, I think so. For the most part, the d-pairings, the lines were intact throughout the preseason, not swapping around too much. There’s certainly some chemistry, but like I said, there’s always room for improvement and that’s what we’re going to do.
Yeah, we’ll correct that for sure. You can chalk it up to a first game and all of that, but the bottom line is that we just can’t afford to lose a game like that, especially with the amount of mistakes that we made.
A ton. He’s proven it for 15 years, so it’s certainly something that we’ve talked about before and I’m sure we’re going to talk about again moving forward.
# Todd McLellan
Well, the end result [was the most disappointing thing], because we were still in it at the end of the night, so losing a game that we got an outstanding effort by our goaltender and we still had a chance to win, still had a chance on point, really. Obviously the focus is going to be on the play at the end, which makes no sense, it’s hard to defend it, but our team gave up 51 shots on goal tonight. When you look at the night, the first goal against was just terrible game management, coming out of the penalty box and not being aware. The second one is at the back end of a power play, you have to rewind the video a little bit, we were on the power play and we negated it with the offensive zone penalty, so terrible game management there. Third one, an actual power-play goal and the fourth one was just stupidity. A lot of it is self-inflicted but you also have to give them credit. They put a lot of pressure on us and they created a lot of turnovers and a lot of pressure on our net, so we’ve got work to do.
We’ve preached and preached about it, but sometimes you’ve got to get hit pretty hard with a 2×4 and maybe this was it. If you look at some of the penalties we’ve taken throughout exhibition season, I think I mentioned it a few times, we were penalized more away from our net than we were near our net and what I mean by that is neutral zone and offensive zone. Maybe it’s not important yet, I don’t know, but it’ll cost us eventually and it did tonight. Then, it’s simple game management things. Knowing where the puck is coming out of the penalty box on a line change you’ve got to be aware of that. Missing the net on that play. The end, a set breakout that we work on all the time, you’ve got numerous options. That is all game management, that’s getting engaged and ready to go. Their team did a better job of it than we did tonight.
The camp was pretty open. We had an idea of what the roster was going to look like and then there was going to be a competition for some remaining spots, as well as spots in the lineup and on the powerplay. What he’s done is he’s come in and won ice time and he’s earned the opportunity to be in key situations and he continued to play. I thought he was one of our better players again tonight. Self satisfaction and individual growth is great and we need that from Gabe and we’re proud of him, I think he’s going to continue to do those things. As we drive home tonight, we’re not going to be too concerned about number 13.
We can tell them that you just don’t turn the light switch on when the season starts but sometimes you have to live it a little bit and we mentioned it virtually every game in the preseason. Starting in San Jose, we were shorthand five times in the first period. We brought it up and we brought it up and when you’re in one-goal games, those moments cost you both offensively and defensively and it did tonight.