PRESEASON FINAL – Kings 2, Sharks 3 OT – McLellan takeaways + Clarke preseason debut and notes
# PRESEASON FINAL – Kings 2, Sharks 3 OT – McLellan takeaways + Clarke preseason debut and notes
# Contributors
# Players
# Staff
# Summary
The LA Kings came up short in their first game of the 2022 preseason, falling in overtime to the San Jose Sharks by a score of 3-2 at the SAP Center on Sunday evening.
# Notes and Quotes
# Todd McLellan
Well, the flow part didn’t exist for both teams. It was a long night, a lot of penalties. Obviously, we’ve got to get better in some areas as far as stick infractions and holding and hooking and use our legs a little bit more, but if they’re ever going to call a lot, now’s a good time for it. I thought the penalties took a lot of players out of the game for us particularly early, but even in the second period on the power play, it took a lot of players away. Tough night to evaluate. Some guys were noticeably good and as always, there’s a couple of disappointments but for night one, we’re fairly pleased.
Well, he’s got a lot of experience and he trained quite hard over the summer. So he’s been on the ice for a while now. I believe his body probably felt really good. He was tracking the puck well, it’s a lot to ask right off the bat, but if anybody can do it, he can and he proved again, he could get it done.
A lot of the things that we thought we would. Poised with the puck, good playmaking, read the ice well, for him it’ll be getting acclimatized to heavier forechecks, perhaps some craftier, smarter players on the forecheck that are reading where the puck might go to. More time on the power play of course. We haven’t even talked about power play yet, we just put guys out and let them play. But I thought overall, he handled his minutes well and had an impact on the game.
We get to choose our lineup. It doesn’t matter who dresses what, we’re evaluating our players and the fact that we got to play against a pretty good team tonight was good for us. It was a big challenge for our players and a good evaluation tool for us. But the veterans on both teams are managing themselves. They’re trying to get themselves ready, they know how long the season is, and I think it’s sometimes misleading when you look at number of veterans in the lineup versus rookies.
It was, he had a tough first period, simply because of minutes and flow and rhythm, but as the game wore on he did the things he needed to do. He played in straight lines, he was physical player and got to the blue paint, which is an area of the game I didn’t think we did a real good job of but he was one that did get there.
# Brandt Clarke
It was fun. It’s cool to see the superstars on their team, see quality NHLers all over the ice. They’re bringing it. They’re getting warm for the season and they’re bringing their best they can and it’s challenging but I thought I tried to step it up in the second and third. Definitely some nerves in the first, maybe I was gripping the stick a little too tight but I thought I got more comfortable throughout the game and I thought I was making more plays and I was pretty satisfied with how the second half of my game went.
Definitely, the first was pretty much all killing and the second was all on the man-advantage. It’s a big swing there, you gotta get adjusted and get ready for both sides. But you know, I thought we did a good job, we were phenomenal on the kill today. We didn’t even give them any shots and our power play was pretty good too. If you look at our shots we probably had like 15. I’m not even seeing the numbers but I’m guessing. Would have been nice to bury a couple and I think we had a couple of really quality chances and we were definitely pretty happy with our shifts when we came off at times but when you look at a zero in the goal column there it’s frustrating even when we know we had some really high quality looks.
Oh, he’s an absolute rock. It’s crazy seeing all the highlights on TV but you know it’s so much more calming when he’s actually back there and especially there was a lot of nerves for a lot of us today but he was so calm, cool and collected back there. He was making the big save, they had a really high quality chance eight seconds of the game and he was he was up for the challenge. You can just tell he’s a pro and he’s always ready for any moment. He definitely kept us in it. They could have put up three, four or five maybe in the first period but he held it to one and we’re really grateful for that to give us a chance in the game.