The fans were buzzing. The action was immediate. The teams traded leads as the game went on. You think I’m talking about Kings versus Ducks, the game that took place on Sunday at 5pm in Anaheim? Not a chance. I’m hyping the Mets-Dodgers game that more than a few in Honda Center were keeping track of on their phones. At the very least, that other game, 25 miles or so up the road, featured offense. The one in Anaheim, not so much.
The teams could have used fatigue as an excuse. The Kings had been on an extended road trip, but they hadn’t played since Thursday, in Montreal. They won, 4-1. The Ducks were home Wednesday, then jumped over to Colorado for a game Friday, an exciting affair that they ended up losing in OT, 4-3. But come on, and show up! Neither team did in an insipid first period that saw the shot total get to Ducks 6, Kings 5, despite two power play opportunities for Anaheim.
Whether the Ducks used “I’m tired” as an alibi or not, their coach, Greg Cronin, after the game, was clear in his diagnosis. “We didn’t skate. The way we played, you’re not winning shifts. You’re not winning games. We did everything half speed. I’m not sure why. We looked slow.”
He went on to add, “The power play was kind of a microcosm of our game….We were slow getting to our spots. We got caught in between, and they would just take the puck from us and ice it.”
The most exciting play of the first was when Alex Turcotte passed back from the side of the net to Warren Foegel, who took a one-timer that Ducks’ goalie Lukas Dostal got a shoulder on. Other times when the Kings set up in the Ducks’ zone, Radko Gudas, the new Ducks’ captain, was standing right in front of the net, swatting away all chances, and knocking back all comers.
Period two got no more entertaining. The shots would end up 10 Ducks, 17 Kings, despite the Kings having had two power plays. These were largely ineffectual and might be summed up thusly: Alex Turcotte stands in front of the net, but not close enough to the crease to be of any real effect. Why? Because the massive presence of Gudas keeps him at arm’s length from the dangerous area. Meanwhile, either Brandt Clarke or Adrian Kempe tries to thread the puck between the crowd of bodies lined up out from the net.
To give credit where it’s due, Frank Vatrano of the Ducks was also highly involved, in the spot high in the PK diamond that put him in harm’s way as he blocked shots.
The Ducks had just four shots (you already did that math, I’m sure), but Trevor Zegras played a big period, including a chance at the left side of the net in the last minute of the frame. Still nobody scored. Meanwhile up the freeway, the Dodgers and Mets were trading punches, with LA up by a 6-1 score with three innings gone, and the Mets recording a homer to make it 6-3.
The scoring drought near Disneyland was broken, finally, in the third period, with the Kings getting four goals (two into an empty net) and the Ducks one. The Kings outshot the Ducks 19-5 in the period to tally a lead of 37-15 for the game.
The first LA goal came when Adrian Kempe scooped a puck that had come cross-ice behind him and off the boards for him to skate onto. He went diagonally right-to-left and directed the puck behind Dostal, who had no chance.
Kempe explained the play that led to the goal as he stood in the Kings’ locker room after the game: “Kopi [Kopitar] always makes great plays [as does] Q (Byfield) so I kind of felt that I had the D-man beat, and obviously a great pass by Kopi. Whenever I get one of those chances, I don’t need that many.”
He added later, “When you see that Kopi or Q has the puck on the tape with time, if I feel that I have a D-man on me, that I can beat, I’ll just take off. Those guys know that, and they’ve found me so many times before, so it’s a good asset to have.”
The Kings’ second goal, and the eventual winner, came off a gift from Jackson LaCombe to Alex Laferriere in the Ducks’ slot. LaCombe intercepted a Kings’ pass, then put the puck blindly behind him into his own slot, where Laferriere said “thank you” and put it straight behind Dostal.
Afterwards, Cronin was protective of LaCombe, in his first game of the year. The coach said, “I thought he played really well, and he had two shifts that weren’t good [leading to LA goals]. But I thought his other shifts were fine.” Further to that, speaking of LaCombe’s first mistake, letting Kempe go and end up scoring, he said, “The goal they scored to make it 1-0, it was again we’re late on the forecheck, so they move it around us. We’re standing flat-footed, and they throw it around us, a 60-foot pass with speed, and they’re a fast team, a mature team, and they just won all the puck battles.”
He said it all again: “We weren’t skating. We don’t skate. This is a speed game; like, the whole league plays fast. And we just didn’t play fast tonight…. The last two games, we’ve been on cruise control. We’re just watching the game. They’ve got to take ownership.”
The Ducks play in Anaheim again Tuesday. Hopefully, Cronin’s message gets through before then.
Notes
The Ducks’ third line, Frank Vatrano, Ryan Strome, and Troy Terry, was its best, and the only one, according to the coach, that was actually skating.
And up the road, as everyone knows, the Dodgers were stomping the Mets, scoring as late as the eighth inning to ice the game, 10-5, and grab a spot in the World Series.
The Ducks had a spot reserved in the press box for Gann Matsuda, a long-time Kings writer. Loved by all, Gann died a week ago. He will be missed for a long time by all who knew him.
