a tight 2-1 affair in Game 1<\/a>, with a disallowed goal for Colorado and some near misses on both sides. Those were headlined by Drew Doughty\u2019s point-blank bid that went wide of a wide-open net late in the first period.<\/p>\nThe Kings\u2019 penalty kill, which placed third-to-last this season and didn\u2019t even negate two-thirds of their infractions in the final month of the season, went 4-for-4. The Kings also got the match\u2019s only power-play goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe won special teams. When you do that on the road, you\u2019d think you\u2019d maybe do better, but it is what it is. We\u2019re down in the series, but [there were] a lot of good things,\u201d Kings interim coach D.J. Smith told reporters.<\/p>\n
The Avs produced a season-high number of hits and were still out-crunched by the Kings in a game that featured 84 credited hits. The Kings\u2019 leading scorer Adrian Kempe was out to agitate, picking up the slack from the departure of Corey Perry, whose Tampa Bay Lightning lost their Game 1 in overtime to Montreal.<\/p>\n
It was merely the nascence of what figures to be a very physical and contested series.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re battling against the same team, right? So it\u2019s gonna be like that all playoffs, and that\u2019s the way it starts,\u201d Kings center Scott Laughton told reporters.<\/p>\n
Colorado had 14 wins by a margin greater than three goals while the Kings produced just three, and the Avs played in 29 one-goal games to the Kings\u2019 47, plus another 15 that were one-goal games until an empty-netter was scored.<\/p>\n
Still, both game-winning goal-scorer Logan O\u2019Connor and Coach Jared Bednar felt uncomfortably comfortable on a bumpy, white-knuckled ride.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really happy with the way we played. I think that\u2019s the kind of game you can expect playing the Kings. It\u2019s a tight-checking team,\u201d Bednard told reporters. \u201cWhat\u2019d they play, 50-something one-goal games and low-scoring games? I\u2019m comfortable with that. I think our team\u2019s comfortable with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kings did not score for 57:38 of Game 1, when they finally broke through on their fourth power play. Their fourth line struggled, including mismanaging the puck on the play that led to O\u2019Connor\u2019s winner.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Andrei Kuzmenko, who was activated ahead of the playoffs from injured reserve (meniscus surgery), was not in the lineup. He led the Kings in power-play goals this season despite missing 30 games between his knee injury and several healthy scratches.<\/p>\n
One lineup decision that isn\u2019t much of a decision these days is starting goalie. Anton Forsberg hung tough in Game 1 and should be expected to retain the net for Game 2.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was great. He\u2019s been great for us down the stretch. He\u2019s made some huge saves when we needed him to, he\u2019s been calm and he\u2019s been collected,\u201d defenseman Mikey Anderson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Colorado Avalanche accumulated 31 more points in the standings and were +121 relative to the Kings in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,145,4,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-556939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-avalanche","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-avalanche","11":"tag-coloradoavalanche","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-los-angeles-kings","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116439550928384207","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556939","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=556939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}