FINAL - Kings 5, Panthers 4 - Moore, Vilardi, McLellan - LA Kings Insider

Last updated Nov 6, 2022 Edit Source

• News post

• Zach Dooley

The LA Kings began a four-game homestand with a victory by a 5-4 margin over the Florida Panthers on Saturday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

• Trevor Moore
• Gabe Vilardi
• Viktor Arvidsson
• Anze Kopitar
• Jonathan Quick
• Blake Lizotte
• Rasmus Kupari
• Kevin Fiala

• Todd McLellan

# Trevor Moore

I thought Kopi had changed honestly, so when Vik made that play on the wall, I just peeked over and saw he was on the ice still. It just kind of set up nicely and a good play by Quickie too, obviously.

I think picking up from other guys, I have tried to in the past. High-end guys like [Mitch] Marner, they try to look before they get the puck and get their head up right away. Obviously I’m not at that level but it helps to take a peek before you get the puck.

Ups and downs in that game, it was good offensively and Quickie was great, but there’s some stuff to button up defensively and we know that. We’re working on it and we’re getting better.

# Gabe Vilardi

Yeah, it was a back-and-forth game. I don’t know how many times we had the lead, or they were up, but yeah, it was. It was a tightly contested game.

It was a tied up draw, I tied up my guy and Kopi ended up winning it. Eddy took a shot and it went wide and I kind of read that it was going wide. I got a lucky bounce, it came out just on the other side of the goal line. I knew that [Bobrovsky] was coming late to the post, so I just tried to beat him under the glove and it ended up going in.

Yeah, for sure. Largely, two of those goals we were on the ice. The first one there, the Mikey Anderson own goal, that starts with me, I was the high guy and I didn’t do a good job, so that goal was largely on me. The other one, I felt like I dived in and Tkachuk made a nice play, but it is nice to help the team win offensively after that game.

# Todd McLellan

Yeah, I would. Lots of highs and lows throughout the night, changes of momentum, open and then tight checking it had a little bit of everything so, character, yeah.

Well, that was the turning point in the game. We’re penalty killing, goaltender interference, takes them off a power play and puts us on a power play, only 25 seconds of it maybe and the power-play goal that we scored was on that play at the end of the period. Coming in, up by a goal, have a little momentum, I think that was a break that we’re obviously pleased with. The connection of Quickie moving it up and I think he had a sense of where the period was and that the power play was going to be short lived. He’s got pretty good hockey sense in there and credit to him to get that.

[[Gabe Vilardi]’s done a lot of good things for us, you know, he scored the winner tonight. You can’t play your best every night, it’s impossible. So what do you have in your “B” game and Gabe had a good enough “B” game to be effective tonight. He scored, we trusted him in the in the last few minutes of the game. He’s done a real good job this season.

That’s what [Matthew Tkachuk] does. It makes him a good player, it makes him a villain. Do we like the poking in Quickie’s facemask? Of course we don’t, but I don’t think it’s anything that we can deal with. Now other people have to look at it.