Through two periods against the Vegas Golden Knights, Artemi Panarin gave the Los Angeles Kings pretty much exactly what they had hoped for when they traded for him. Unfortunately for the Kings, hockey games are three periods long.<\/p>\n
Panarin posted two assists in his Kings debut, but a disastrous third period in which Vegas scored five goals, including one empty-netter, and allowed the Knights to take control of the game as the Kings fell 6-4. The loss was made even more brutal by the fact that Vegas was resting a number of key players to give them more time to recover from the Olympics.<\/p>\n
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\u201cObviously, they still played really good,\u201d said forward Quinton Byfield, who scored two goals. \u201cAll the guys checked hard, played hard, but missing their top guys is an opportunity that we can\u2019t miss.\u201d<\/p>\n
The third period included a four-minute sequence in which the Kings allowed three goals in rapid succession to trail 4-2. Vegas generated significant momentum from this time, with each goal clearly leading to the next one, and the Kings were caught off-balance by the turn of events.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had an opportunity, clearly, to win the game, and made three mistakes, I guess, in four minutes,\u201d head coach Jim Hiller said. \u201cAnd all three of them ended up in the back of our net.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the Kings made it a one-goal game on two occasions in the period, Vegas had a response both times to put the game away, making the result rougher for a Los Angeles team defined by defense who so rarely puts up four-goal efforts. Even worse, the Kings did so on just 19 shots and still couldn\u2019t turn that into a win.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made it hard on us to create a lot of chances, but we can\u2019t give them five goals,\u201d Hiller said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the breakdown is. It\u2019s not the fact that we didn\u2019t get seven. It\u2019s the fact that we gave them five \u2014 I don\u2019t count the empty net. So it\u2019s a combination of things, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Panarin, his performance was the biggest bright spot for the Kings. Playing mostly on a line with Adrian Kempe and Alex Laferriere, he assisted on each of the team\u2019s first two goals, making good passes throughout the night and running much of their only power play to help create a goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he gave us what he\u2019s going to give us,\u201d Hiller said of the new forward. \u201cThat line together, despite playing their first game, I thought [it] looked like they had chemistry. They moved the puck around between the three of them pretty well. So that\u2019s probably the positive from the evening. But he\u2019s a great player. You saw that tonight, and you\u2019ve seen that for the last 10, 12 years in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n
Panarin has been around the team for a few weeks without playing a game due to being traded right at the start of the Olympic break. Now he jumps into the intensity of a push for the playoffs, what is now a 25-game sprint for the Kings to earn a postseason spot they currently don\u2019t have.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy career has been full of pressure a lot of the time, and I\u2019ve been used to that pressure,\u201d Panarin said via an interpreter. \u201cSo it\u2019s gonna continue, getting used to the system.\u201d<\/p>\n
But with so few games left, the Kings know they can\u2019t afford to drop many more games like this one. Their stretch run continues tomorrow night against another divisional opponent, the Edmonton Oilers.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously this one hurts, but gotta keep moving forward,\u201d Byfield said. \u201cAnd tomorrow\u2019s a massive game as well. They\u2019re right there in the standings as well. So we\u2019re trying to try to make a run here and get in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Through two periods against the Vegas Golden Knights, Artemi Panarin gave the Los Angeles Kings pretty much exactly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5129],"tags":[366,10969,3039,149,5317,5,2098,145,40,4,1295,5695,74,39,5316],"class_list":["post-472715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vegas-golden-knights","tag-adrian-kempe","tag-alex-laferriere","tag-artemi-panarin","tag-golden-knights","tag-goldenknights","tag-hockey","tag-jim-hiller","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-news","tag-nhl","tag-quinton-byfield","tag-tst-los-angeles","tag-vegas","tag-vegas-golden-knights","tag-vegasgoldenknights"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116136161866004378","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472715","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=472715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}