“I don't think we were competitive enough in the first two periods," said Head Coach Ryan Huska. "Third period, I thought we started to skate a little bit and we had some more zone time than we had in the first two periods. But I think a lot of it came down to the competitive side and not clean or crisp with the puck.
"I felt like we were slow overall and that really starts in your zone - whether that's the speed that we're moving the puck (with) or how we're moving our feet. I found that we stood around a lot in the first period. Their neutral zone was good tonight; I thought we did a good job with it. But I thought we played into it a little bit because that we played the game at."
The Kings opened the scoring with a powerplay goal at 6:48 after Miromanov was tagged for closing his hand on the puck in the neutral zone. With Arvidsson setting a perfectly placed screen in front, Fiala took a cross-seam pass from Anze Kopitar, peeled off the near circle and rifled a shot over Markstrom’s glove hand.
There was plenty of pushback from the visitors, mind you, with tempers flaring past the midway point of the frame after Markstrom was bowled over in the paint, earning Adrian Kempe and Brayden Pachal a trip to the box after a picking up off-setting double-minors.
The skirmishes continued late as Rasmus Andersson, Ilya Solovyov and, yes, Martin Pospisil got in on the action, but cooler heads eventually prevailed and allowed the final 30 seconds to tick by without incident.
The Flames out-shot the Kings 10-8 in the period but had a difficult time attacking with through the neutral zone, so the rush game was largely kept at bay.
As a result, LA had the better of the chances, leading 4-1 in high-danger looks after one.
"I don't think we were quite ready for them tonight," Miromanov said. "They came out hard and were on top of us early. We weren't really efficient with our transition game and breakouts. They were on top of our sticks and bodies and I feel like we were turning over the puck in the grey zones.
"They were taking away the lanes and were quick jumping on us. It's our job to feed the forwards, to be good on the breakouts and have that great transition, the great first pass. (But) we weren't sharp today, especially in the first period, especially the beginning.
"Credit to them. They came out hard, (but) we have to really bounce back, get a great night's sleep, get some rest and be ready tomorrow."
Less than a minute into the second, Arvidsson curled from the corner to the top of the right circle and unleashed a wicked shot over Markstrom to open up a two-goal lead for the homeside.
A Matt Roy point shot was deflected en route by Thomas to make it 3-0 at 7:42.
Thomas – a second-round pick in the 2018 Draft – now has three goals in only five NHL games after being recalled from the AHL’s Ontario Reign last week.
Back-to-back Flames penalties (a bench minor for too-many-men, followed by a questionable roughing call to Andrew Mangiapane) gave the Kings a 53-second-long 5-on-3 in the back half of the frame. But as the old saying goes, your goaltender as to be your best penalty-killer, and Markstrom came up with an absolute 10-beller off a backdoor one-timer from Fiala.
"They play the trap, 1-3-1, and we know what kind of game it's going to be," Huberdeau said. "But we played good against them all year, so there was no excuses on that. We've got to play that game, play that tight game and get pucks in and we didn't do that for 60 minutes.
"They're a good team. They showed it tonight. I think we've got to give a better effort to get some wins and at least compete against a team like that. We just put this one in the garbage, go back tomorrow and be better."
