Los Angeles, CA—You want news? About hockey? The LA Kings finally started to score some goals on the weekend, dumping the Hurricanes in Carolina 4-2. They backed up that performance Wednesday night at the start of a three-home-games-in-four-nights string with Montreal in town. (They also play Friday night and Saturday night, then go on Four Nations break.)
Against Montreal, the Kings doubled up the numbers with a 6-3 win, prompting their coach, Jim Hiller, to offer a simple answer as to what’s changed: “We can score. Puck went in. We’ve been playing a little bit faster when we’re trying to get out of the zone when we had good possession. Increasing our speed, but part of it is … puck going in. Sometimes it goes in.”
Two players made available after the game, Kevin Fiala and Warren Foegele, each said, “We’re playing North.” Not “North-south,” mind you. When asked about the expression, Hiller said, “So they’re giving away our secrets, are they?” So you know that’s his message filtering into players’ heads. And it’s working.
The Kings came into the contest with a respectable 27-17-6 record, for 60 points. Montreal was 25-23-5, for 55 points. In their respective Divisions, however, the Kings are considered a sure playoff bet. Montreal is struggling, with a number of other teams feeding at the same trough.
Of note, it was the home season debut for Drew Doughty, hurt in the pre-season. That meant, amongst other things, that he was wearing the redesigned Kings’ sweater for the first time this year, at least the dark (home) version. He got into three games on the road before this one in Los Angeles.
Fans greeted him with hope, and what most were probably thinking reflected to next’s week’s Four Nations Face-off, with the self-talk going something like this: “Surely someone on the Canadian team needs to rest a boo-boo.” Doughty has made no secret of the fact that he was trying to time his comeback to coincide with claiming a place on that ice. Of course, when the lineups were announced, he hadn’t played yet this year, and thus could not slide into a spot in the Canadian lineup.
This game was his fourth (do the math) of the season. Coach Hiller said he would work him in on the road trip, but that Doughty was limiting his minutes. Sure, sure. He played nearly 24 minutes in his road debut. So far, his productivity includes munching an average of about 25 minutes per game.
When he first stepped onto the ice versus Montreal, he was shown on the video board to a somewhat surprisingly mild reaction. “Druuu” was heard, but it wasn’t the chorus of cheers I for one expected.
On this night versus Montreal, Number 8 found himself paired with Vladislav Gavrikov and playing 25:16 minutes. He ended a plus-1 on the scoresheet.
Gavrikov scored the first Los Angeles goal. Doughty was also on the ice, but did not factor in the goal. That happened with only a couple of minutes gone in the first period. The rest of the frame was not stellar for the returnee.
At one point, he tried to get too fancy in his own end, spinning and throwing a puck backhand and right onto a Montreal stick. Goalie Kuemper had to handle the chance, and he ended up taking a tripping penalty. Later in the period, Doughty muffed a puck and gave a chance to Joel Armia, who went in on goal.
In period two, the puck was floated in from the point by Montreal and went off Doughty’s back and fluttered up and over Kuemper. He was facing the boards to the right side of the zone trying to box out Montreal’s captain. Not his fault, but another sign of a night where things weren’t sharp in his favor.
Doughty also played, as you might expect, on the power play, In P2, with Arber Xhekaj in the box for Les Habitants, Doughty kind of floated with the puck in his zone. At the opposing blueline, he put a smart low wrister on net from distance.
Reflecting on these shots, one wonders what happened the “the windup.” Some context here: Doughty used to have the biggest windup in hockey. He would raise his stick as far as possible without bending over backwards. An ear tickler. Often it took too long and let guys get set up in front of him. Funny thing is, Elliotte Friedman, this week on his “32 Thoughts” podcast, said something about the loss of what he called “the 70s windup.” It would have been fun to see it brought back on this night, but Doughty played for strategy, not flash, in his home debut.
Period three saw him engaged with Montreal’s Christian Dvorak in front of the net. Standard defenseman stuff, but shortly, he allowed Alex Newhook go around him and to the net on the outside. He made up for it by chasing the Habs player around the net and pinning him to the opposite boards. Shortly after that, Doughty was lying on the ice to block a cross-seam pass low near the net. You could call that selling out for the good of the Kings, who were leading 5-3 at the time.
After the game, Hiller said less when asked about his superstar than I would have expected, answering to a reporter’s question, “He’s not really on a [schedule for minutes]. With Mikey [Anderson] out, that’s a guy who played a lot of minutes.” He then asked how many minutes Gavrikov had played on the night. He added, “I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I know Mikey is going to get his [minutes], that’s for sure.”
In other words, comment on Doughty was swallowed up in matters pertaining to the defensive corps as a whole. Might be best to assume that Doughty can play as much as he likes, despite a night in which he looked to some eyes a bit out of sorts at times. Would a slower return have been better? Perhaps, but that’s behind now as LA looks forward to back-to-back home games against the Stars and Ducks starting Friday at 7:30pm.
