The Los Angeles Kings held their own against the Colorado Avalanche for most of the night, with multiple players getting individual highlights. In the end, it wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
Despite Anton Forsberg\u2019s excellent 35-save performance and Angus Booth\u2019s first career goal in his NHL debut, the Avalanche\u2019s offensive attack proved to be too much as the Kings lost 4-2 in D.J. Smith\u2019s first game as Los Angeles\u2019 interim head coach.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we wanted to establish is a sense of work ethic, a sense of physicality, a sense [that] we\u2019re not going to sit back, we\u2019re going to come get you,\u201d Smith said. \u201cAnd I think we did all those things tonight. So you need the points for sure, but at this point, you can\u2019t fault the effort, and we\u2019re going to need that every game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kings have won just one of their four games since returning from the Olympic break, making their push to the playoffs even more difficult than it already was. While they did acknowledge the positives of playing the NHL\u2019s best team so close, they also admitted how hard it is to take any moral victories at this point in the season.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t short of effort, that\u2019s for sure,\u201d defenseman Brian Dumoulin said. \u201cIt was a fun game, a fun atmosphere to play in \u2026 obviously we want to come out with at least a point in that one. Tough break putting in that much effort and not getting a point out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nowhere was the effort felt more than in Forsberg\u2019s performance. Even though he faced 38 shots, including 29 in the last two periods, he kept sight of the puck consistently and fended off look after look to keep the Kings in the game and maintain a tied game for most of the third period.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, his efforts weren\u2019t enough. A brilliant play by Nathan MacKinnon set up the go-ahead goal for Colorado and Martin Necas sealed the game with an empty-netter.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe battled for us,\u201d Dumoulin said of Forsberg. \u201cI mean, he kept us in that game. He made some huge, timely saves for us, some really big saves. He\u2019d been playing so good for us that obviously we weren\u2019t trying to tilt the ice for him. But he definitely stepped up tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other high point of the game for the Kings came in the second period when Booth scored. One of three Kings making his NHL debut tonight, the defenseman snuck down low to deflect a Dumoulin shot and tie the game.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t soaked it in fully yet, but honestly, I\u2019m pretty numb right now,\u201d Booth said. \u201cI\u2019ve always been more of a low key guy, and I don\u2019t feel much pressure, in a way where I don\u2019t feel like I had to score a goal or get a point or whatever. But it\u2019s a great feeling, and I\u2019ll go back on the drive home tonight and soak it all in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite those positive moments, the Kings still find themselves in the same place they\u2019ve been for a while: putting in some solid efforts but losing more often than winning, and needing to find a winning streak to avoid missing the playoffs for the first time since 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe play teams that are ahead of us on the way in,\u201d Smith said. \u201cSo when you look at it, you feel like you\u2019re a long way away. When you\u2019re the other way around \u2014 like it was [for] us last year \u2014 you don\u2019t feel like that lead\u2019s very much. You don\u2019t think you got anything under control. So this thing\u2019s gonna come right down to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps even more so, it will come down to whether or not the Kings can take tonight\u2019s effort against a top team and apply it to the rest of their games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Kings held their own against the Colorado Avalanche for most of the night, with multiple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5126],"tags":[19910,12966,4807,144,3155,5,186,1760,240,5303,793,145,5304,5302,513,517,40,4,5695],"class_list":["post-482436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-kings","tag-angus-booth","tag-anton-forsberg","tag-brian-dumoulin","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-dj-smith","tag-hockey","tag-kings","tag-la","tag-la-kings","tag-lakings","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-losangeles","tag-losangeleskings","tag-martin-necas","tag-nathan-mackinnon","tag-news","tag-nhl","tag-tst-los-angeles"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116164382351336354","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482436","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=482436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}