The Throne Room

Digging Deep

I think one has to be encouraged by what we’ve seen from the Los Angeles Kings the last two games. The Kings have battled some adversity and managed to maintain an even keel, not wavering from their game plan. It’s resulted in victories over two very tough opponents - first Buffalo on Thursday night, and last night the Detroit Red Wings - a team the Kings hadn’t beaten in their last six tries.

Adversity mounted early on as Detroit took a 2-0 lead into the first intermission. Valterri Filppula seemingly skated through a handful of Kings and took advantage of Jon Quick committing to the butterfly block a bit too early to put the Red Wings on the board first, and Todd Bertuzzi tipped a Brian Rafalski shot from the top of the circle on a 5 on 3 power play to extend the lead to two.

But the Kings, instead of folding their tents, stepped up their game in response. Anze Kopitar scored his 20th goal of the season early in the second period - Jimmy Howard stopped his original shot but failed to get a handle on the rebound. Wayne SImmonds chipped the rebound over and behind Howard and Kopitar batted it out of the air into the net. The goal validated the Kings’ efforts and despite some pressure by Detroit, you kind of got the feeling that the Kings were going to get the equalizer sooner than later. That equalizer didn’t come in the second period, but Jon Quick did make a key stop on Detroit’s Derek Meech who broke in alone coming out of the penalty box.

The Kings continued to work hard and tied the game on a great play in the 3rd period. Kopitar curled in the left corner of the Detroit zone and lost an edge, falling to the ice, but managed to keep the play alive by dishing it to Simmonds, who found the trailer, Peter Harrold moving in unmolested. Harrold’s shot beat Howard to the stick side to tie the game at 2.

Kopitar got his third point of the night on the Kings’ third straight goal, a beautiful tic-tac-toe passing play in which Kopitar found Scott Parse, who dished it to the front of the net, right to the stick of the waiting Brad Richardson, who buried it past Howard.

The Kings played very solid defensive hockey in the final 7:58 of the third period, and Jon Quick made several key stops to preserve the victory. The win vaults the Kings into a tie for 6th in the Western Conference and gives them a 3 point cushion over Detroit.

The rest of the Kings road trip, is a bit of a slippery slope. It’s easy to look at games in Toronto and Columbus, two of the league’s worst teams this season, and assume that four points are in the bag. However, the Kings have a penchant for the poorly played, letdown loss after a big win, and no Kings fan would be suprised to see a less than stellar effort and loss of points. What I can hope, is that the Kings will continue to work hard, play the game that’s gotten them four points in their last two games, and if that’s the case it’s reasonable to expect the Kings could return home to Staples on Feb 2nd having won at least 3 of 5 on this road trip.

Who knows, maybe there will be some guy named Ilya Kovalchuk on the Kings roster by then too. More of my thoughts on that in the next couple of days.

Kings in Toronto Tuesday night - no local TV feed, so if you have Center Ice, you’ll have to put up with “Holy Mackinaw!” about 50,000 times.

Go Kings!

-JS