PRESEASON FINAL – Kings 4, Ducks 5 – Vilardi, Edler, McLellan

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• News post

• Jared Shafran

• Gabe Vilardi
• Alex Edler
• Cal Petersen

The LA Kings had their highest offensive output of the preseason Tuesday night in Anaheim, but were unable to hold a pair of two-goal leads and came up short to the Ducks at the Honda Center, losing 5-4.

• Gabe Vilardi - 2 goals
• Arthur Kaliyev - 1 goal
• Tobias Bjornfot - 1 goal

# Todd McLellan

Some good evidence that’s what you’re always looking for as a coach. I thought we started well and our game grew as the night went on. Got the lead into the midway point of the second and similarly to the game in in LA the other night, started to give it back a little bit and took four penalties in a row. That didn’t help; two of them were in the offensive zone. And then I didn’t like our overall team engine. We made mental mistakes and is that because of fatigue or is it because of shift length? That played a role in that as well.

I think it’s starting to happen, yeah. And that’s that evidence that we’re looking for. There’s guys that are elevating their games, there’s some that are falling off and showing maybe they’re not quite ready and then there’s some that we’re waiting for. And I think the ones that are elevating are great. The ones that are falling off, that happens. The ones we’re waiting for are the ones that have to get going. In fairness to them, some have only played two games. For whatever approach each team takes to training camp and how many games different guys get, we’re five games in and we’ve had key players that have only played two nights. We’ve got two more games coming up and we’ll try and get them in as much as we possibly can and we have to take that into consideration but a lot of teams in the league are like that too.

Well, one it looks like he’s having a lot of fun and I think that’s a huge part of it so give him credit for being enthusiastic and being excited and his teammates love playing with him right now that’s a real good sign. The way he’s using his body to protect pucks and keep plays alive. Power play, we’ve given him a bit of a new role and he’s accepting of that and he seems to be in command of it. There’s a lot of positives from Gabe Vilardi.

Yeah, we kept some plays alive, we were in a position where we needed to be, we had some looks to the net. I think we won a face-off and we didn’t get through the goaltenders eyes which, at six-on-five, you better have somebody going through those eyes. So that was a disappointment, but the general structure for not having worked on it very much or at all was a carryover from last year and they did a good job there.

# Gabe Vilardi

Yeah it was a 5-4 game so a lot of goals, a lot of power plays, PKs, so obviously that’s going to create more opportunities. We’ve got to find ways to score goals so I mean it’s a good thing but we didn’t come out on the right end of it.

I’m playing the net-front, moving around, I’m just kind of reading off them and I’m trying to find open areas back door kind of like I did on the first goal there. Yeah, I’m comfortable there, just kind of tapped into them and just trying to get open on that back side.

Very good stick. Like it’s a very high skill level that I don’t know if it’s undercover like very hard to see but when I play with him you really notice how good his stick is, how many pucks he tips, how any pucks are going out of the zone and he somehow knocks it out of the air and then he’s just a very smart player so it makes it easier on everyone he’s playing with when you’re playing with smart guys. – on Phillip Danault

# Alex Edler

We’re all trying to get ready for the season and trying to find out game, trying to find the chemistry and trying to execute our game plan and that’s what we have to continue to work on.

I think we’re all pretty clear on what our game is and what we need to do and we showed a lot last year and what made us successful so that’s just what we’ve got to do.

Yeah, I mean it’s been a while since I was in that kind of situation. So it was fun, it was fun to be out there and be part of it. Too bad we couldn’t get one.