Sooner or later the winning streak was going to come to an end. The Los Angeles Kings won six straight heading into last night’s game and were about to play the second game of their long road trip. A hard-fought battle between two top teams in the league ended up swinging in the New Jersey Devils’ favor as the Kings fell 3-1.
There’s nothing to be overly upset with regarding the loss, it was a tight game between two very solid teams. It was a back-and-forth contest for a majority of the night and even though the Kings couldn’t get a whole lot through to the net and the shot clock tells you different, they were in it until the end.
Third Period Woes
The Devils started periods a lot like how the Kings have started against other teams. Both teams had their fair share of looks throughout the game but it was the Devils’ transition game that fully blossomed in the third period. The Devils outshot and outchanced the Kings in all three periods but the greatest disparity was in the third. The Kings were on their heels and couldn’t get anything going offensively creating only three-scoring chances to the Devils’ eight and zero high-danger chances to the Devils’ four. Their FF% (percentage of total unblocked shot attempts, goals, shots on net and misses) was at just 12.5 percent.
The Kings ended up allowing two goals in the third period, one of which was a shorthanded goal courtesy of Devils defenseman Brett Pesce.
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“Their game is their neutral zone transition game and we got to be aware of that and in the third period I don’t think we were able to defend them […] we fell behind, we were trying to catch back but at the end of the day I think they came to play in the third period and they were better than us,” said defenseman Jordan Spence.
Spence was the only one to solve Devils goaltender Jacob Markstrom, opening the scoring with a blast from the point after breaking up a 2-on-1.
Keep It Simple
The Kings won six games in a row and for multiple reasons. One of those reasons was their ability to get pucks in deep, forecheck hard, get bodies to the front of the net, and have their defensemen find those shooting lanes. It’s how the Kings have found most of their success offensively this season and last night they got away from that and as a result, weren’t able to register many shots on goal or find the back of the net.
Only managing 13 shots on net the whole game, there were too many forced plays trying to be made, too many cute passes, and individual efforts trying to gain the zone instead of keeping it simple and doing what has worked in the past. You take some of those extra passes away and replace them with shots on goal and maybe we have a different result. That hard and fast aggressive forecheck just wasn’t as present as it was in the past six games. Because the Devils were so good in transition they were able to use that space given to generate their own chances.
“Too fancy that instead of shooting it we were trying to pass it, and at the end of the day I think we have to just keep it simple. We won six games in a row for a reason and I think we played the Kings way, which is just putting pucks behind them shooting a lot of pucks and going to the dirty areas. I don’t think we did that today but we just got to move on,” said Spence.
Throughout all of that the Kings were still in range until halfway through the third period. A couple of mistakes led to goals where the Kings had the puck on their sticks seconds before it landed in the back of their net. Mismanagement of the puck in a couple of different scenarios resulted in the Devils capitalizing on those miscues. The big one was a very rare and odd giveaway from Anze Kopitar in the neutral zone on the power play which led to the Pesce short-handed marker.
Overall, the Kings’ didn’t have a bad game; just those little mistakes go a long way in a tight battle against a team like the Devils, especially when generating chances didn’t come easily.
The Kings will look to shrug this one off and get back into the win column on Saturday as they head over to one of the most iconic venues to play the New York Rangers.
