In their first of what will likely be several games without Drew Doughty, the Los Angeles Kings made a few defensive mistakes on Monday night. Those mistakes were all the Washington Capitals needed.
Alex Ovechkin and former King Matt Roy scored on goals right in front of the net after the Kings left them wide open, and the Kings four-game road winning streak came to an end in a 2-1 loss.
“You leave, first of all, one guy wide open in front of our net, then you leave [Ovechkin] wide open in front of our net,” Kings head coach Jim Hiller told reporters after the game. “You know, it’s not going to end very well. There’s just two mistakes, big mistakes, and they buried them.”
The Kings now face an upcoming stretch without Doughty, who is listed as week-to-week with a lower-body injury. Only allowing two goals obviously suggests a solid defensive performance, and perhaps the mistakes can be attributed somewhat to a tired group approaching the end of a long stay in the Eastern Time Zone. But the game shows just how much tighter the margins get without a top-tier defenseman like Doughty in the lineup.
In a game like this, where the Kings didn’t score a single even-strength goal and couldn’t take advantage of most of the opportunities they had, the defense unfortunately has to be almost perfect. The whole team picked up as the game went on, but the early breakdowns proved to be too difficult to overcome.
“That’s on us,” Kings forward Kevin Fiala told reporters. “You know, we’ve got to find a way to get ready, and I think we did. The start was so-so, but I think we found our legs as the game went on and got better and better.”
Contrast Monday’s game with Saturday’s 1-0 win over the Ottawa Senators, in which Doughty exited. The defense allowed just 17 shots on goal compared to Monday’s 25. Eight shots might not seem like a lot, but when the offense is only scoring one goal, it makes a huge difference — in this case, quite literally the difference between a win and a loss.
The Kings have relied on an all-around, team-based defensive style in recent seasons. When Vladislav Gavrikov departed this past offseason, that scheme became even more important. Now that Doughty is set to miss time, they’ll have to lean into that mentality even further.
A wide variety of Kings blueliners found themselves on the ice for Washington’s goals — Cody Ceci, Joel Edmundson, Brandt Clarke and Doughty’s replacement Jacob Moverare all had negative plus/minus ratings for the game. Neither of the goals were necessarily their faults entirely, but they now have a bigger role in the absence of one of their most important teammates. They’ll need to step up, and so will the entire roster. It’s still fairly early in the season, but their entire defense is already being tested.