LA Kings hope to ‘settle in’ after penalties and mistakes evident vs Vegas

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• News post

• Eric Stephens

• Anze Kopitar
• Jonathan Quick
• Adrian Kempe
• Arthur Kaliyev
• Sean Durzi
• Trevor Moore
• Gabe Vilardi
• Alex Iafallo
• Quinton Byfield
• Viktor Arvidsson
• Matt Roy

• Todd McLellan

Thoughtful by nature whenever a question comes his way before he gives an answer, Todd McLellan ruminated on the unique element that is managing a team on its opening night as he went into his fourth with the Kings and 15th as an NHL head coach.

I used to get all wound up. I get excited about opening night. But I also understand that based on experience, there’s so many highs and lows. Teams can be too wound up and too excited to play. They can be under-aroused. Execution can be poor but intent good. You can just be flat-out red rotten. There’s so many variables that go into opening night that it’s hard to predict where it will go. That second game is kind of where it really begins to settle in. You can’t put too much (into the first game). You can’t get too high or too low after opening night, I guess, is what I’m saying. Just because it’s so random. – Todd McLellan

He’s proven it for 15 years. It’s certainly something that we’ve talked (about) before. I’m sure we’re going to talk going forward. – Anze Kopitar

Knowing where the puck is coming out of the penalty box on a line change. You got to be aware of that. Missing the net on that play. […] A set breakout that we work on all the time. You’ve got numerous options. So, that is all game management. That’s getting engaged and being ready to go. Their team did a better job of it than we did tonight. – Todd McLellan

It wasn’t all bad. But there’s stuff that we can certainly correct and eliminate from our games that are going to make us sharper and win more games. – Anze Kopitar

We’ve preached and preached about it. Sometimes you got to get hit pretty hard with a two-by-four. Maybe this was it. You look at some of the penalties we’ve taken throughout exhibition season. I think I’ve mentioned it a few times. 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 you eventually and it did tonight. – Todd McLellan

We’ll correct that for sure. You can chalk it up to a first game and all of that. “But the bottom line is we just can’t afford to lose a game like that. Especially with the amount of mistakes that we made. – Anze Kopitar