FINAL - Kings 7, Wild 6 - Fiala, Kempe, McLellan - LA Kings Insider

Last updated Oct 17, 2022 Edit Source

• News post

• Zach Dooley

• Kevin Fiala
• Adrian Kempe

• Todd McLellan

The LA Kings moved into the win column on one of the strangest nights we’ve seen in awhile, a 7-6 win over Minnesota on Saturday evening.

# Adrian Kempe

Yeah, offensively it was a good game for us, especially after the first couple games when we didn’t really feel like we had enough offense going, so that was a step in the right direction. On the other side of the puck, I think we still have some things we’ve got to improve, but I think we deserved the win tonight. If it was 1-0 of 7-6, it doesn’t matter right now, this was a huge first win and we got better in all three zones. Good thing and a good win for the team.

Yeah, for sure, and I think we showed a lot of that in preseason. In the first couple of games, I feel like you’re trying to get back into everything, you’re a little nervous when you get out there. It felt good out there tonight, I thought both units looked good. Somethings we can keep building on.

Yeah, huge, I mean that’s momentum. The way you can get that back, it’s huge. I think we invited them, including myself, too many penalties tonight, so that’s something we’ve got to improve still. PK did a good job at the end, in the third, which is huge. We’re all excited about the game.

Yeah, we had some more looks, we’ve played a couple of games together now, we’re trying to figure each other out through the first couple of games. When you start to figure it out, you know where each other is on the ice. We had some good chances so far in the first three games and we got a couple of good ones tonight.

# Todd McLellan

I think if you told us we were going to score seven goals, I’d have been jumping for joy. It’s the giving up six that isn’t the ideal recipe and that’s a really hard game to explain. I’m not sure that we’re going to give six goals up and win a game again this year, so that’s the negative side of it. The positive is we found ways to score seven. Strange night, maybe that’s what we needed to get a win and find a way. Rest and get ready for Detroit.

Yeah, we were, but really, there wasn’t a lot of volume both ways. The shots weren’t 50 to 49 or anything like that, it just seemed to be going in the net, didn’t matter what happened. Whether it bounced or went straight in, it was an odd night for both teams in their zones. I thought both teams did a real good job of penalty killing, yet gave up power-play goals. For a lot of years in the league, this one’s tough to explain.

We saw more from our power play tonight than we did in the first two games. We had a lot of changes, we’ve got new people in new places, we’ve got some new thoughts and ideas of how it wants to work. It’s going to be a work in progress, but you can see little snippets of things that are starting to happen and that’s a positive sign. Penalty kill, again, the best penalty killer we can have is not being in the box, I think we’re short six times from the beginning of the second period on. That’s a terrible recipe for success and we’ve got to find out a way to solve that and the penalty kill can do a better job.

Important, very important, especially on the road. You can feel the momentum starting to go their way and to come back and have your key players execute and score in those situations is important. Just when the opposition is creeping back into the game and they get nailed with another one, that can do wonders for us. It buys us time to regroup and get our legs underneath us again.

I would say that, I would say probably both teams were thinking the same thing. Get us the save and we’ll get you a goal. Obviously that was the way the night was going and we did give up six, I’m not sure that we can pin them all on Cal Petersen. So, what’s important for him is he got a win, he’s got some confidence as far as winning goes, and the team got that, but it’s pretty evident we have to clean some things up.