Corey Perry and Warren Foegele<\/a> for draft picks and adding Scott Laughton and Mathieu Joseph, depth pieces, neither of whom are signed beyond this season.<\/p>\n ![\"Montreal](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772973135_984_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Montreal forward Juraj Slafkovsky scores on Kings goaltender Darcy Kuemper during the third period Saturday.<\/p>\n
(Mark J. Terrill \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n
And if that sounded like a lack of confidence, D.J. Smith, the interim coach, said it was well-earned.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s up to the players and the coaching staff to get the team in a spot where the [general] manager feels that he\u2019s got to really help the group to try to win,\u201d he said Saturday. \u201cObviously we didn\u2019t do that enough and it\u2019s unfortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n
But if the Kings\u2019 breathing is shallow and their pulse faint, they aren\u2019t dead just yet despite seven losses in their last nine games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to win,\u201d Holland said. \u201cIt\u2019s the National Hockey League. We\u2019re [four] points out of a playoff spot. Maybe the narrative changes if you\u2019re 15 points out of a playoff spot. But we\u2019re [four] points out of a playoff spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Panarin \u2014 wearing the No. 10 sweater Perry had before he was traded to Tampa Bay \u2014 helped the Kings take a first-period lead Saturday, battling Montreal defender Mike Matheson for the puck entering the Canadiens\u2019 zone. That allowed Adrian Kempe to skate in and take the puck off Matheson\u2019s stick and feed Anze Kopitar at the far post for the tap-in.<\/p>\n
That goal gave Kopitar 1,304 points for his career, just three shy of Marcel Dionne\u2019s franchise record.<\/p>\n
Samuel Helenius thought he had doubled the lead less than two minutes later but the goal was waved off by goalie interference. And the Kings should have had more after a period in which they outshot the Canadiens 16-1.<\/p>\n
That proved costly when Montreal\u2019s Jake Evans drove a slap shot by Kings goalie Darcy Kuemper from the top of the left circle to tie the score in the second period.<\/p>\n
Juraj Slafkovsky put Montreal in front less than five minutes before the second intermission, lifting a wrist shot over Kuemper\u2019s glove from the slot. But Laughton, making his Kings debut, got that back two minutes later, lining a low wrist shot from a tough angle off the pads of Canadiens goalie Jakub Dobes. Jared Wright got his first NHL point with an assist on the play.<\/p>\n
The Kings\u2019 Alex Laferriere and Slafkovsky traded third-period goals, with Slafkovky scoring 31 seconds after Trevor Moore went to the penalty box for slashing. That set the stage for Nick Suzuki\u2019s go-ahead goal 49 seconds later, following a Moore turnover deep in the Kings\u2019 end.<\/p>\n
And that moved the Kings a game closer to a new season Holland has begun preparing for.<\/p>\n
\u201cTime is running out,\u201d Laferriere said. \u201cWe have 20 games left now and we need every single point. We can\u2019t change what happened so we\u2019ve got to try to take the positives from the game and make sure it doesn\u2019t happen ever again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because from here on out, they\u2019re on their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019re on your own. That\u2019s the message Kings general manager Ken Holland delivered to his team at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[463,464],"tags":[3039,3203,3559,654,436,5,7855,816,955,21,1567,4,60,734,343,929,956,14,104,718,130],"class_list":["post-493094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl-playoffs","category-stanley-cup-playoffs","tag-artemi-panarin","tag-draft-pick","tag-future","tag-game","tag-goal","tag-hockey","tag-holland","tag-king","tag-minute","tag-montreal-canadiens","tag-next-season","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-playoffs","tag-playoff","tag-point","tag-scott-laughton","tag-second","tag-stanley-cup","tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","tag-stanley-cup-playoffs-nhl","tag-team"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116193575074610300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493094","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=493094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}