LOS ANGELES \u2014 Although the atmospheric river storm has passed through Southern California, hats rained down on the ice at Crypto.com Arena in a performance that the Los Angeles Kings have been searching for over the past month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A team that was tied for the fewest goals per game heading into Saturday needed a spark, as its playoff aspirations were beginning to be put in question. Facing the rival up-and-coming Anaheim Ducks in their first game out of the holiday break, the Kings put together a statement game in hopes of getting back on track.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An all-out blitz in the opening period and Alex Laferriere\u2019s first career hat trick propelled the Kings on their way to a 6-1 win against the Ducks on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis felt different than the Chicago game,\u201d head coach Jim Hiller said. \u201cI think we got six against Chicago, but this felt different. This felt a lot like the last couple of months of last season.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Drew Doughty got the scoring started when he went five-hole against Luk\u00e1\u0161 Dost\u00e1l on a two\u2013on\u2013one just three minutes into the game. Not even a minute later, Brian Dumoulin\u2019s pass from the blue line deflected off Trevor Moore\u2019s skate and into the back of the net.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Ducks called a timeout in hopes of stopping the bleeding, but then Laferriere joined the party.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just over halfway through the opening frame, Adrian Kempe picked up a loose puck behind the Ducks’ net and fed Laferriere for the one-timer past Dost\u00e1l. He wasn\u2019t done there.<\/p>\n
In the early minutes of the third, Dumoulin sent a lob wedge out of the defensive zone to jump Laferriere on a breakaway. After putting on some moves, his backhander found the back of the net.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the score already out of reach, Laferriere put the finishing touches on a career night as he ripped a slap shot from the point that tipped off Cutter Guathier\u2019s skate and past Dost\u00e1l to make it 6-1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Laferriere\u2019s line with Kempe and Anze Kopitar was dangerous the whole game, picking up where they left off from Tuesday night\u2019s game against the Seattle Kraken, when they combined for 14 shots on goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose guys were finding me in the soft ice pretty much the last two games so many times and I wasn’t able to bury for them,\u201d Laferriere said. \u201cTonight I was able to.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Also contributing to the offensive onslaught was the blue line. Four Kings defenseman combined for six points against the Ducks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re on a team that relies on one or two guys just to do some magic themselves,\u201d Hiller said. \u201cIt usually takes all five guys on the ice, and we can get your defense pushing up or making the pass. We kept some pretty good pucks alive and put some pretty good rubber at the net from the back end. Didn’t always hit the net, but some good, put them under pressure, and that kind of breaks the defense down, and then you can take advantage from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was an important night for Quinton Byfield as well. The former second-overall pick was in the midst of a prolonged scoring drought that spanned 10 games without a point and 17 games without a goal.<\/p>\n
Byfield drew a primary assist in the opening goal to end the point drought, then he got a piece of Brandt Clarke\u2019s wrister from the blue line and deflected it into the net to end the goal drought.<\/p>\n
The former second-overall pick has drawn the ire of some fans for lack of production this season. But with the Kings as a whole averaging an NHL-worst 2.50 goals per game before Saturday, Byfield isn\u2019t the only one to be blamed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c(Byfield) hasn’t scored a whole lot, but there’s a few of us that haven’t scored a whole lot this year, so hopefully that’ll jumpstart everything,\u201d Kopitar said.<\/p>\n
The Kings had lost six of their previous seven games before Saturday\u2019s troucning of the Ducks. With the win, the Kings now improve to 16-12-9 and are two points above the playoff cut.<\/p>\n
The upcoming schedule for the Kings is not a favorable one, as they travel to Colorado to face the juggernaut Avalanche before coming home to face the Tampa Bay Lightning, Minnesota Wild twice and the San Jose Sharks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a weird point in the year, but we’re lucky enough to have some players who have a lot of experience and who have been through the wringer in this league and they’ve been in all sorts of situations,\u201d Laferriere said. \u201cAnd for us young guys, it’s nice to be able to look at those guys and see how they handle situations like this and being able to lean on those guys and look at them and see how patient they are and not forcing anything and it gives us a sense of relief.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the offensive outburst to put an emphatic end to a scoring drought, it appears the holiday break helped reset the Kings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s nice to be away from the rink a little bit and spend time at home with your family and obviously Christmas time is very great in my opinion, so it was nice,\u201d Kopitar said. \u201cBut then again, once you come back to the rink, you get reminded a lot of what did happen and should happen going forward, so we were just able to come out strong and really get it going early.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The holiday break presented two options for the Kings. They could either use those three days to look in the mirror for self-reflection, or they could get their minds off hockey and come in fresh for the second half of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hiller prefers to get the mind off the sport, but it\u2019s never that easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I hope the players did,\u201d Hiller said. \u201cThe coaches never do, as much as you’d like to try, but I hope the players did. It seemed like they were fresh today. We had good energy this morning, so let’s hope this is a start of bigger and better things here for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 Although the atmospheric river storm has passed through Southern California, hats rained down on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5126],"tags":[366,10969,367,884,4807,511,883,5,186,1760,240,5303,793,145,5304,5302,3041,40,4,1295,1861,5695],"class_list":{"0":"post-377140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-kings","8":"tag-adrian-kempe","9":"tag-alex-laferriere","10":"tag-anze-kopitar","11":"tag-brandt-clarke","12":"tag-brian-dumoulin","13":"tag-cutter-gauthier","14":"tag-drew-doughty","15":"tag-hockey","16":"tag-kings","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-la-kings","19":"tag-lakings","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-los-angeles-kings","22":"tag-losangeles","23":"tag-losangeleskings","24":"tag-lukas-dostal","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-nhl","27":"tag-quinton-byfield","28":"tag-trevor-moore","29":"tag-tst-los-angeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115796096084238558","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}