FINAL - Kings 4, Maple Leafs 2 - Fiala, Kempe, Petersen, McLellan - LA Kings Insider
# FINAL - Kings 4, Maple Leafs 2 - Fiala, Kempe, Petersen, McLellan - LA Kings Insider
# Contributors
# Summary
The LA Kings finished a three-game homestand with a record of 2-1-0 following a 4-2 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday evening at Crypto.com Arena.
# Players
# Staff
# Notes and Quotes
# Adrian Kempe
Yeah, for sure. I think we played a good team game again, a good 60 minutes. The d-zone was a lot better than the last game, so we’re happy with that, and we keep scoring goals which is a plus for the team for sure.
Keep shooting, I think being more of a threat, both with Dewy at the top and from the flanks a little bit more. We were trying to think a little bit too much before that and we didn’t want to shoot the puck. I mean, just going back to being simple I think is the key right now and obviously getting a couple goals gives you some confidence too.
Yeah, for sure and especially against these types of teams, you know, they play with a little bit more risk, I’m not gonna say than we have, but than we want to. Today, I think we did take care of our end a lot more and we got our chances at the other end too, which is a good thing. If we keep playing like that against those types of teams, I think we have a good chance.
# Cal Petersen
Yeah, one-hundred percent. Those are the kinds of games that we want to win and those are the games that got us far last year. I think that was a good step to getting our really our full team effort to where we want it to be.
Just simple things. I knew my game was right there and it’s just doing the right things to get your confidence to where it needs to be. I wanted to make sure I put in the work to be prepared whenever my next opportunity was.
Yeah, it’s obviously nice, it beats giving it up, but I mean I’ve played in a lot of games where I give up the first shot and a lot of games I’ve made the first save and the outcomes have all been different either way, good games and bad games. It obviously helps the confidence to get it back in, but you just take it one shot at a time whether it’s the first shot of the game or the last shot.
# Todd McLellan
Yeah, we’ve done this a couple times this season where we get back to what we need to do. That’s a pretty dynamic, offensive team that we played against tonight. Last year, we went into their building, checked pretty well and came up with a win and we tried to run and gun with them here and came up with a big loss. We tried to use some of last year’s approach for the game. We targeted three areas that we thought we needed to take care, that was it, and for the most part the guys got it done. That’s a real good sign and now the consistency is something that we need to grow.
Yes, we did. Not pretty, but they went in and the goals were important. Again, that power play is dangerous, the quality of player they can put on the ice and the way they move the puck around, so the penalty killers did a real good job. You throw in the pulled goalie situation for the last two minutes, there was enough kill for a full night. Everyone to a man, D, forwards and especially Cal I’m really happy for him, they all did a real good job on the penalty kill.
I thought we had a good response. It was near the intermission, which helped us, we talked about it and we liked a lot of things in our game. We didn’t like how that that goal happened, a turnover and then we kind of went to sleep for a second, but if we think we’re going to be perfect, which we’re all striving to be, we’re going to go insane, it doesn’t exist. We want to push for perfection and I think we realized we made a mistake, it ended up in our net, let’s go again, let’s not let it affect us.
Kevin coming in has added a dimension [offensively]. I thought him playing in the position he did tonight balanced things out a little bit more. He’s been able to create with workers and creative players in his career, so he did a real good job there.
I thought with Kevin going with Ras and that line, there was little more balance and all the lines contributed. The powerplay did its thing. I’m sure everybody would have preferred to have four or five minutes of ice time, they always do, but it was distributed pretty well.
[Sean Walker] has worked hard in practice and we’ve got to keep in mind his injury, nobody talks about that and what he went through. It’s tough to come back from that, there are still repercussions to that as far as fatigue goes and how you feel, so sometimes he’s going to need the odd day off. We’ve talked to Blakey a lot about that because he went through it and he talked about the first four or five months of the season, sometimes you’re really sore. It’s not the injury itself, but it’s everything else around the injury that that can be fatigued, but he worked hard in practice, he felt good and it was time to play him again.