The final opening night of Anze Kopitar’s NHL career went sour in the second period, and the Los Angeles Kings struggled to generate consistent offense in a 4-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche.

Nathan MacKinnon recorded two assists for the Avalanche in the middle period, during which Colorado scored three goals. The Kings didn’t score at all until around five minutes remaining in the third period.

“[The] second period wasn’t good enough,” Kings defenseman Drew Doughty said. “We were on our heels. We were turning the puck over too much. They were getting a lot of speed off turnovers in three-on-twos and stuff, and that hurt us. Good response in the third, but too little too late.”

In that second period, the Kings were outshot 11-5, in part because they had to kill off three penalties, one of which carried over from the first period. Although the Kings limited the Avalanche to one power-play goal in six chances, the consistent penalty killing prevented them from being able to generate any rhythm on offense.

“You give that team six power plays, to hold them to one is actually probably a pretty good job in the end, if you want to look at one part of the game,” Kings head coach Jim Hiller said. “But clearly, you can’t give them six and then think you did well. You’re not going to win that way.”

Hiller also repeatedly gave credit to Colorado’s strong performance, noting the Avalanche were in some ways able to beat the Kings at their own game.

“What they did really well — what they did better than us — they checked us better than we did, and we usually check pretty good,” he said. “And so credit to them. They really played a strong checking game, didn’t give us much time and space. And we needed somebody to either get a good forecheck going and just try to create something ugly down there, or make a play. And we were really not able to do either of those two things.”

Arguably their best highlight of the game came in the first period, when Kings forward Jeff Malott fought Colorado’s Josh Manson after Manson delivered a big hit to Malott’s fellow Kings forward Warren Foegele.

“We thought it was a high hit,” Hiller said. “So Malott went in and, you know, we got no problems with that. I thought that was a really important moment for him and for our team to know that we’re not going to take that.”

The good news for the Kings is that they don’t have to wait long to get a chance to rid themselves of a tough night. They hit the ice tomorrow night, this time going on the road, against another team that made the playoffs last season, the Vegas Golden Knights. A win in Nevada, or at least a stronger performance, can shake off the feeling of tonight’s game in less than 24 hours.

“If we could play that game again, I think we would want to do it right now,” said Kings forward Adrian Kempe. “So I think tomorrow is going to be a great opportunity for us to show up again and play a better game and play another really good team, one of the best teams in the league. So another good test for us.”

“We have a lot of good games coming up, so I think it’s going to be a great test for this team early on, but I think it’s really good for us. I think we’re all excited for it. We got to embrace it.” 

But Kempe made sure to note one more key detail about the upcoming games.

“And, yeah, we got to play better than we did tonight.”