by Nice to be back, Insiders!
Training day in Boston, where the Kings take to the ice at the Warrior Ice Arena.
We’re in the season now. Therefore, practices will look slightly different. During training camp, the Kings went harder, they went longer, they became more physically demanding and demanding. Speaking with Jim Hiller since he took over as head coach, his mantra has been to do full, hard workouts when the team has time, but get as much rest and recovery as the schedule becomes more compact.
There won’t be many options for the rest of this trip. The Kings practice today and play tomorrow. They have Sunday off and play on Monday. Today’s training, which took place on a day between games, involved training in some target areas, but it was not a long or strenuous run. The Kings were on the ice for about half an hour, getting things moving and taking care of business. With an early game tomorrow, there will be no skate morning tomorrow, so the Kings practiced today. There were a few things to work on.
The Kings knew last night in Buffalo wasn’t their best performance, but they struggled and secured the two points in the end.
And I don’t mean that they knew in any way. They know how they got their job done.
“Darcy really kept us in the game, there’s no doubt about that,” said forward Trevor Moore. “We won, so it’s good, but I wouldn’t say it was a good example of resilience, I think. I think it was more Darcy standing on his head and then Kopi took over.”
Jim Hiller stated that after reviewing the game, things became even clearer than they were last night.
If you also looked at Hiller’s availability after the game, that was pretty clear at the moment too.
“We see it more clearly, I would say we didn’t play well and it was very clear in which areas of the game we didn’t play well,” Hiller said. “It was clearer on the video, it happened more often than we thought, and it explained a lot of the speed we were encountering in the game.”
The players who secured the two points were the players you want to step up, so to speak – Anze Kopitar and Darcy Kuemper, as Moore pointed out. Someone had to do it, and it was two veterans, two Stanley Cup winners, who got the job done.
One is the long-time captain of the Los Angeles Kings, the other is an offseason signing with something to prove, a goalie returning to his former club to get back into shape. Kuemper was the star of the show for 40 minutes. Kopitar took center stage in the third period and scored his second hat trick in his last four opening nights.
Buffalo had been a house of horrors for the Kings in recent years. Want to know a sobering statistic? The last Kings player to score in Buffalo was Dustin Brown, who played in last night’s win. That pretty much sums up the last few seasons in Western New York.
“In general, your goalie has a chance to keep you in the game or win you a game or save you a game, however you want to describe it, whether it’s Kuemps, Rittich or the goalies we’ve had in the past had here,” said Hiller. “It’s a critical position and then sometimes someone has to make a play, make a big play. Last night it was Kopi a few times. We don’t expect it to be Kopi every time, but someone has to step up and he’s done that quite a few times here in his career.”
Hiller added that the Kings weren’t making fun of last night’s performance. It’s early in the season, Game 1 early and the Kings had a bad night. That much was clear. There were some encouraging signs in the third period and perhaps this also brought with it the right attitude in the situation. Moore and defenseman Joel Edmundson both agreed the third period was much better, as both had been through rough patches during their respective careers.
“These games can be frustrating and stressful, but when you’ve been in the league for 10-plus years, you’ve seen it all and you just stay in the moment,” Edmundson said. “Especially in this situation, it’s just one shot to decide the game. We relied heavily on our leaders and it paid off.”
It is important that it does not become a trend.
The Kings survived last night, leaving Buffalo with two points. They probably won’t come away with the same performance twice, next up is the Boston Bruins. The good thing is that the Kings are moving forward and we are doing so with two points in the Bank of Los Angeles. 1:0 is 1:0 no matter how you split it.
“We didn’t have a good game and we can play a lot better, but nobody remembers that when we get to April and we’re fighting for the last few points to secure a playoff spot,” Hiller added. “We’ll take it and move on.”
Speaking of moving on, looking to the future: The Kings are taking the ice as a full group today, with all 23 players on the active roster taking the ice. This group lined up similar to yesterday, listed below –
Laferriere – Kopitar – Kempe
Jeannot-Danault-Moore
Fiala – Byfield – Foegele
Lee-Turcotte-Lewis-Thomas
Anderson-Spence
Gavrikov-Burroughs
Edmundson-Clarke
Englund-Jones
Kümper / Rittich
Hiller indicated that he does not expect any changes to the lineup for tomorrow’s game against Boston. Tomorrow the puck will be dropped in the afternoon and there will be no morning skate to assess things. So it’s good to have that behind us. Typically, you don’t throw away the playbook after a good or bad game on opening night. There’s a lot going on there due to the circumstances, and the Kings were facing a Buffalo team that was playing Game 3, not Game 1. Perhaps an upset Buffalo team after losing their first two games of the season to the Devils in Prague had. Uploaded audience at the first home game. In any case, there’s a lot to digest and we’re ready for another test tomorrow.
To put it simply, we continue to Boston.
The Kings and Bruins just met in the preseason, a rare exhibition match between the two clubs.
In that game in Quebec City, the Kings felt like they performed very well. There were a lot of good things in this game as Los Angeles controlled the game in a 5-on-5 system. However, that was the preseason. As we saw last night, the speed, intensity and physicality are exponentially higher in the regular season. The Kings have to prevail against strong opponents in these areas. Boston lost six in Montreal yesterday and we all know what happens when the Kings and Bruins meet in Boston. Goals, fights and overtime.
In tomorrow’s game preview, I’ll hear some reactions from Brandt Clarke, who scored the first NHL goal of his career in Boston last year, as well as Hiller, who understood what that game meant last season and what tomorrow’s game should bring. A matinee in Beantown. Always a blast.
Photo by Richard T. Gagnon/Getty Images
