FINAL – Kings 4, Red Wings 3 – Durzi, Grundstrom, McLellan

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• News post

• Zach Dooley

The LA Kings capped off a 4-0-0 homestand with a 4-3 victory over the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

• Sean Durzi
• Carl Grundstrom
• Anze Kopitar

• Todd McLellan
• Trent Yawney

# Sean Durzi

Yeah, I mean right off the bat, the top unit did a great job moving the puck. You saw Dewy on the outside make a really nice seam pass, obviously a fortunate bounce for Kevin and I’m sure he’ll gladly take those but either way it was going back door to Kopi who was going to tap it in. Good play all around and getting the puck movement from them and us.

Yeah, you make the pass when the pass is there and when I see traffic and see guys making a good play in front, whether it’s a screen or a tip or something like that, I get the puck to them. I thought I had a couple of good opportunities to shoot, obviously the first one I slipped back door and it was a great pass by Phil, off a rebound from Arty. Shooting the puck is the only way to score really, you sometimes get fortunate bounces, but that’s how you’ve got to score. Shoot the puck, get good bounces, getting it back and obviously fortunate to get them in the net.

It’s good, really good, a lot better. To have [Trent Yawney] working with me every single day with reps in practice, morning skate just working on the left side, collecting pucks on my backhand and making clears. Whether it’s working in the shooting room after practice, it’s really just getting comfortable and being dangerous from that side. I think it’s a really good tool that I’ve now added to my game and every single game I’m more comfortable and I’m learning. Whether I can be a shooter off that side, a passer, the deception, it’s completely different from the right side, my edges and all that. I’m adding it to my game and obviously I’m going to continue to get better but from the beginning of the season, I think it’s gone a long way.

# Todd McLellan

It was a good homestand and I thought our road trip set us up for that. We played a really good game in St. Louis, we got spanked in Dallas and learned a lesson and we probably deserved better in Chicago, so it gave us some momentum coming home. If you look at the goals against on the homestand, even tonight there wasn’t an even-strength goal, it was two power plays and a 6-on-5. A power-play goal last game and then a shutout, so we haven’t given up much at 5-on-5, which we’re happy about. A few things to clean up, but good teams play with detail all the time, over and over again, they don’t let it slip. That’s what we’re pushing to be.

Yeah I am, but you know what, we’re coaches, we whine about everything. We just won four games at home and we’re trying to fix something already, maybe we’ve got to smarten up a little bit and relax, but that’s what we do. There are parts of our game that are really good right now, there are other parts that we can improve on. I thought we should have had control of the third period better than we did today, started right off the bat, we weren’t sure if we wanted to play cute or if we wanted to play direct. We tried the cute way and we went to the penalty box, gives them the chance to pull their goalie, I don’t think they’re pulling him at 4-1. We didn’t need to be in that situation, but we were.

Yeah I think it did. It wasn’t dramatic, there weren’t wholesale changes, it was just certain tweaks and competitive situations. We thought we had to get better in them and we saw that tonight.

I wouldn’t say it’s getting easier, because it’s a hard task, but Sean Durzi’s getting more accustomed to it. He’s learning, or maybe he’s learned already, when those pressure points come and how to react to them. If you haven’t played on your off side, that’s all brand new and some of the situations he’s been caught in, you don’t see him caught in those spots as much any more. Repetition, practice and playing, he’s doing a really good job.

You can pretty much count on Anze Kopitar to do that. He’s been our best faceoff guy, we want him in those situations. He’s calm and he’s so strong, when it’s time to defend he gets it done. Really good teams, these guys won championships because they sacrificed, they gave up offense, they did what other teams didn’t want to do in the past and we still have some of that room. Drew, Quickie and Kopi, they have to give and give so that the team can win and they did that in the past and we want them to keep doing that. Kopi did that tonight 6-on-5, he didn’t cheat anywhere and that’s a really good quality that those three have and we want them to promote that.