Goals for a hockey team, like life itself, can have an uncontrollable ebb and flow. For much of the season, the Kings have been looking for the elusive ‘secondary scoring’ to kick in.
Wednesday night in Dallas, Kevin Westgarth scored his first-ever NHL goal and the Kings lost in overtime. Last night, Jarret Stoll netted just his second goal of the year (first in 18 games too) and the Kings lost 2-1 to the Blackhawks.
As could be expected, goal scoring was a popular topic inside the Kings locker room after the game, as well as at coach Terry Murray‘s postgame presser…
Murray on the overall game – “Holding them at two goals is good. They are the leading scoring team in the conference. We had lots of good looks here tonight. We ended up tying the game at 1-1. Then they won a faceoff to make it 2-1. After that, we had four or five tremendous looks and we are just having a tough time finding the back of the net right now. There’s not a better look that you could hope for in a couple of those situations, but it’s just not going in.”
More from Murray – “Extra passes are not a good thing for us right now. We want to get pucks to the net. We have to score some greasy, ugly goals, as they say, and that might be the crack in the door and we can kick it open and start to feel more comfortable scoring goals.”
Anze Kopitar on the overall game – “We had our share of chances but we couldn’t bear down. A couple of times the puck was just laying around there and we couldn’t quite get it in there. It’s tough but we can’t feel sorry for ourselves.”
Kopitar on shot mentality – “There’s no secret to it. You just have to get more shots on net. When you have a 4-on-2 rush you have to go and get a shot on net. You have to keep it simple, take the shot, and not try to be too cute.”
Rob Scuderi on LA’s offense – “They’re [offense] is doing 95 percent of their job right now. The other five percent is just burying that chance when you get there. They’re creating their opportunities, they’re moving well together, and they’re getting open and getting good shots. It’s just burying that opportunity once in a while that seems to be the difference for us right now.”
More from Scuderi – “Any time in this league if you can keep a team to two goals or less, you’ve got to like your chances for a point and hopefully a win. It wasn’t the case tonight; I thought their goalie [Corey Crawford] played well. We missed a few big chances.”
For quotes from the Blackhawks locker room, click here. Other Kings related posts are linked below.
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