If you have been following the Los Angeles Kings this season, you know it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows through 26 games. Finding a level of consistency has been difficult, but as of late, the Kings have made one thing clear. Not only can they hang with some of the best teams in the league but they can beat them as well.
After three days off the Kings hosted the third-best team in the Central Division, the Dallas Stars, who were 7-3-0 in their last 10 games before last night. Starts have mostly determined the way the Kings are going to play for the rest of the game but that wasn’t the case last night as they found a way to claw back down two goals in the first period to come out with a gritty, hard-fought 3-2 win.
Foegele and Jeannot Had a Night
They haven’t been talked about as much as players like Adrian Kempe, Anze Kopitar, Brandt Clarke, or Alex Laferriere have this season, but it would be criminal to not mention how well Warren Foegele and Tanner Jeannot played last night.
They are not the two players you would expect to drive the offense and contribute with multiple goals that lead to a win, especially against a strong Stars squad, but the effort and compete they showed was outstanding and a big reason why the Kings were able to complete the comeback.
Their line got pucks in deep and forechecked hard. A lot of their success came from working the puck down low behind the goal line and striking when they had some room. It was Foegele doing the dirty work behind the net and in the corners that led to two of the three Kings’ goals. On the first one, he picked up the puck down low and banked it off the net in front to Jeannot who just stuck with the play and ended up depositing in the rebound after bouncing it off the boards. Foegele scored the third goal and it was him and Jeannot making things happen deep in the Stars’ end again. Foegele worked the puck behind the net fighting off Logan Stankoven before quickly stepping out for a wrap-around shot.
That entire line of Foegele, Byfield, and Jeannot led the team in scoring chances with eight, as well as high-danger scoring chances with six. It was the Kings’ best line and they were rewarded on the scoreboard for their efforts.
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“They’re just hard workers and the way the game was going there was going to be a couple of greasy goals and they’re just around the net, that’s their game, nothing too flashy, they work their a** off every shift and every team needs guys like that and sometimes they come up clutch,” said defenseman Joel Edmundson.
Rittich Stood Strong
David Rittich hasn’t been perfect since he had to take over the starting role with Darcy Kuemper’s injury, but he has been very good. The Stars took it to the Kings not only in the first period before the Kings found their legs, but throughout the night they never really went away. It’s so important for teams to have reliable goaltending and what was one of the bigger question marks for this group heading into the season was how reliable their goaltending was going to be, and so far with Rittich carrying a bulk of the load, there doesn’t seem to be any major concerns.
Stopping 26 of 28 shots for a .929 save percentage, Rittich again did everything he could to keep the Kings in the game and give them a chance at crawling back. He stopped six of seven high-danger chances against and had a strong first and third period where the Stars had a majority of the shots. Only a power play goal and a perfect shot from Mason Marchment beat him.
“Our goalie played extremely well tonight,” said head coach Jim Hiller.
For a goaltender like Rittich who hasn’t had to be that number one guy for a team since 2020 with the Calgary Flames, he has been playing better than expected, and when a team has trust in their goalie it allows them to be more creative and take more risks that could end up paying dividends.
This wasn’t the Kings’ most complete game, and they didn’t necessarily have a point where they dominated the Stars and took control of the game, but it was their ability to shake off a rough first period, get back to the way they wanted to get things done, and most importantly battle it out and generate offense from working hard and cycling in the offensive zone.
This was just the start of a difficult stretch of games in the next week and a half. The Kings have two days off before they host the league-leading Minnesota Wild on Saturday where they will look to extend the winning streak to five games. The Kings have already played the Wild once handing them a 5-1 loss on a back-to-back. Expect Kuemper who was activated off of injured reserve to suit up for his first game since Nov. 13.
