THE Los Angeles Kings (19-16-11) welcomed the Vegas Golden Knights (22-11-12) in a battle between two Pacific Division playoff hopefuls. After a tough loss to the Dallas Stars on Monday, the Kings desperately needed two points as they begin to fall out of playoff contention in the West.
Unfortunately, two points aren’t easy to come by in the National Hockey League, as Los Angeles couldn’t finish the job at home and lost to Vegas by a score of 3-2 in overtime.
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The positive side of all these heartbreaking defeats is that they keep coming away with the loser’s point, which could be considered both a bad and a good thing. The Kings now have the second most losing points in the NHL with 11, oddly enough only Vegas has more with 12.
Kings fail to capitalize early
In perhaps one of the biggest games of the season so far, the Kings needed to get off to a good start early in order to compete with a Vegas team that has found its footing of late.
Los Angeles controlled the majority of the play in the opening period, while Vegas looked incredibly sloppy and was unable to do virtually anything as they struggled to even enter the Kings zone cleanly.
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Unfortunately, the Golden Knights were able to weather the storm and come out of the first period with a score of 0-0. The Kings outshot the Knights 9-5 to end the period, but just couldn’t beat Akira Schmid.
Golden Knights join the board of directors
After managing to escape an ugly first period, the Golden Knights looked like a completely different hockey team in the second period. Obviously, head coach Bruce Cassidy expressed his frustration as it didn’t take long for Vegas to control the game.
Just under four minutes into the middle period, rookie forward Braeden Bowman gave his team the lead with his sixth of the season. After a defensive mishap by Brian Dumoulin, Jack Eichel collected the loose puck and found a wide open Bowman who ripped the puck past Darcy Kuemper.
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Both teams had power play opportunities in the second half of the period, but neither was able to capitalize on them. After 40 minutes, Vegas was ahead of LA 19-17 on shots.
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Fiala finds some string
Just like Vegas did in the first half, Los Angeles weathered the storm in the second half and was fortunate to only trail 1-0 after 40 minutes.
Early in the third period, the Kings started to look desperate as they made a strong effort to tie things up. They managed to generate some quality chances but just couldn’t finish.
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That was until Kevin Fiala buried his team-best 17th goal of the season while Akira Schmid was in the middle of a shutout. Fiala deserved this one as he was stopped on his initial shot, the puck then got to Alex Turcotte in the slot who fired it on goal, which led to a juicy rebound right on the boards from the Kings sniper who wasted no time firing it into the back of the net. Fiala, who was probably one of the standout Kings before his goal, is rewarded for sticking to the game and crashing the net. Turcotte and André Kuzmenko record the assists.
Marner puts Vegas on top
After a good first 10-12 minutes of the final quarter, the Kings were put to the test after Adrian Kempe was ejected for hooking.
A little more than 40 seconds into the power play, Vegas regained the lead as Mitch Marner scored his 11th of the year with a blistering wrist shot. At this point, it seemed like Marner had driven the dagger into the Kings heart.
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Clarke sends the match to overtime
While all hope seemed lost after another Kings fumble in the third period, the team didn’t give up and continued to fight for the tying goal.
It came down to the final 90 seconds, but Brandt Clarke blew the building down by sliding his 5th of the season past Schmid to tie the game at 2-2, meaning overtime was necessary.
The stone wastes no time
After an electric end to the game, the Golden Knights silenced the Kings crowd by scoring just 25 seconds into overtime.
In a somewhat broken play where Kuemper was facing the wrong direction, Jack Eichel managed to find Mark Stone all alone, who was able to put the puck in the wide open cage, giving Vegas the victory in a hard-fought battle between two division foes.
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