PRESEASON FINAL – Kings 6, Ducks 3 – Arvidsson, Kaliyev, McLellan
# PRESEASON FINAL – Kings 6, Ducks 3 – Arvidsson, Kaliyev, McLellan
| Date | Site | Link |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-10-08 | PRESEASON FINAL – Kings 6, Ducks 3 – Arvidsson, Kaliyev, McLellan |
# Contributors
# Players
# Summary
The LA Kings capped off the preseason with a 6-3 victory over the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday afternoon at Crypto.com Arena.
# Notes
# Viktor Arvidsson
It was good. A little bit excited and a little nervous too, after being hurt, coming off of the surgery and the injury, but it was fun. It was awesome to be back on the bench and to get back into the game.
Yeah, absolutely. It was so good to be back, it was good to just be with my teammates and around my teammates for the last week. Just being able to practice with them again and now play, it’s been really good.
Absolutely. It doesn’t matter who I play with, but us three as a line have been so good with each other, both on and off the ice, in practices and during the games. It obviously helps a lot.
# Arthur Kaliyev
Just playing hard everywhere, winning battles and making plays, I’m not thinking about just scoring, but it just comes along with it. You get your chances from just playing hard everywhere.
Whatever is open, I just try to find open space [in the offensive zone]. Whether it’s closer to the net or farther away, wherever there is open ice, I’m just trying to find that space.
We have a lot of intensity on that unit, good puck movement and we’ve gotten a lot of shots on net, which has created a lot of rebounds. It’s been good and hopefully we can keep it going into the regular season.
# Todd McLellan
The first period was probably our best first period of the preseason. Often, when you start with a power play right off the bat, it can dictate where that period goes and our power play was strong at that point. It helped us to get on our toes and get going. The game as a whole, I thought we gave it back a little bit in the second period. It started with a power play, the penalties are a common theme, but the third was a pretty good lockdown period.
We’ve spent some time, still not enough, working on some concepts, changing a few things. They are grasping the ideas and now it’s about execution, we’ve seen some good movement. The one thing that we can’t help them with is the finish, and we had a couple of open nets that we double-clutched or missed. Hopefully that comes more naturally as time goes on.
It was [important] and we treated at least the first 50 minutes of it trying to get a few matches, trying to game simulate what the regular season will feel like. Play the top lines a little bit more, get their minutes up to see what that feels like and then down the stretch, when we got that lead, we pulled back as we would maybe in the regular season and got our third and fourth lines out, who I thought played a really good, solid game for those six players. It felt more like the regular season.
Pretty rewarding, same comment as we had with Sean Walker. Arvi means a lot to our team, he completes the identity of that Danault and Moore line. I thought, of all the players we had coming back who had some sort of injury, he had probably the most energy and polish. Perhaps that’s because we played a full lineup too, but he had a good night. He told me on the bench he felt good, we tried to run him a little bit more down the stretch. A couple of good practices coming up and hopefully he’s ready to play in the real matches.
There’s some positives from tonight, the win, the power play at certain points looked good, the penalty kill did its job, but you’re asking me more about roster spots, who’s going and who’s staying. I don’t know that the plan is going to change a lot based on tonight’s game. I obviously had zero time to sit down with Blakey and his staff, we’re only 10 minutes since the game ended. I don’t know what transpired during the day as far as roster movements with other team’s players, there are so many variables that go into play, so for me to stand up here and give you the honest, straight answer, I can’t.