The Kings had a chance to move into first place in the Pacific Division with a win last night. However, it wasn’t meant to be. In front of the 24th straight home sellout, LA lost nearly every statistical category – including hits, shots, faceoffs and goals. After the 3-1 Colorado win, here’s what they were saying back in the Kings locker room…
Captain Dustin Brown:
On the overall game – “It’s hard to get shots when you don’t have everyone playing the right way. It’s going to take 20 guys; tonight I don’t think we had 20. It’s hard to say [how many guys were playing the right way] right after a game. I’m sure it will be clear on video, but we need more. Tonight we had some good lines, but you need four lines if you want to win games in this league, bottom line.”
On the cycle shifts – “Last game I scored a goal in the cycle and tonight Kopi scored a goal. Just commenting on my line, I thought we had a lot of good cycle shifts and some good opportunities throwing the puck in their zone. We got one goal; we could have had a couple more. If you look at our good games over the year, our third and fourth lines are having cycle shifts for an extended period of time and, like I said, it’s hard to comment on whole game.”
On the lack of commitment – “When you play a team like Colorado, they’re a run n’ gun team and if you don’t have everyone working together and wanting the puck and supporting the puck then you’re just going to be in your end all night. I think we were in our end a lot. We made our defensemen go back for the puck way too often tonight. By the time the third period and late second period broke, they’re tired and they’re getting hit. Unfortunately, they wore us down tonight in our own arena which is ultimately very upsetting.”
On not generating enough offense – “After the game I said, “Quick, hang on buddy. We’re going to get this.” I know he’s frustrated, obviously, with the late penalties and he’s frustrated that we’re not scoring goals and supporting him. I’m sure he’ll never say that, but we have to do that for him as well—play good defense. We need to get going and that obviously includes our line as well. If there is only one line going that night then they have to score two, they have to score three and we certainly had our chances to do that.”
During his post-game presser, coach Darryl Sutter shared the following:
On the overall game – “I thought we had one really good line tonight. I thought Kopi [Anze Kopitar] was really good and Brownie [Dustin Brown] and Willy [Justin Williams]. After that we had some guys really struggle.”
On letting the game slip away – “It’s 2-1 with three or four minutes left and I don’t think it’s slipping away. It wasn’t so much that point but I thought the first period they physically kicked our ass.”
On getting guys going offensively – “This was just a one shot at it, right? We’ve been playing really hard. Other then the Edmonton game I thought we could have played better and I thought the first period tonight, we weren’t good enough. Quite honestly I thought that the [Jay] McClement line dominated in the first period tonight which means their bigger guys physically got us.”
Next up is the Ottawa Senators tomorrow night at 7:30pm.
The Mayor
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