Postgame - Terrible LA game management - Bettman talks RSNs with LA media
# Postgame - Terrible LA game management - Bettman talks RSNs with LA media
# Contributors
# Players
# Staff
# Summary
There would’ve been positives for both the LA Kings and Vegas Golden Knights to digest in their opener had Tuesday’s game gone to overtime, but Sean Durzi’s ill-advised stretch pass was turned over on an excellent stick check by Alex Pietrangelo, leading to Mark Stone’s game-winner with 24.9 seconds remaining.
# Notes and Quotes
# Todd McLellan
We’re lucky it was a one-goal deficit. It could’ve been a three-goal deficit, and that’s a tough one to come back from.
We got an outstanding effort by our goaltender and we still had a chance to win – had a chance for a point, really – but obviously the focus is going to be on the play at the end, which makes no sense. It’s hard to defend it, but our team gave up 51 shots on goal tonight. And when you look at the night, the first goal against, just terrible game management coming out of the penalty box and not being aware. The second one’s on the back end of a power play. You have to rewind the video a little bit. We were on the power play, we negated it with an offensive zone penalty, so terrible game management there. Third one, an actual power play, and the fourth one was actual stupidity. So a lot of it was self-inflicted. But you have to give them a lot of credit – they put a lot of pressure on us and created a lot of turnovers and a lot of pressure on our net, so we’ve got work to do.
Knowing where the puck is coming out of the penalty box on a line change. You’ve got to be aware of that. Missing the net on that play. The end, 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 ready to go. Their team did a better job of it than we did tonight.
# Gabe Vilardi
I thought we were good in the first and third. There wasn’t much flow in the second – a lot of penalties. It was a weird period. I felt we had one shift every 10 minutes just because of penalties and stuff like that. But yeah, we’re good when we get in the O-zone. We ‘ve just got to keep doing the things in the D-zone. And once we get in the O-zone, A.I.’s a really hard working guy, very smart, hungry … and Q is pretty gifted with the puck, too. So, we’ve just got to get to the O-zone.