Kings Cruise Past Caps, 4-2

Seeking to claim a third straight victory for the first time in more than two months, the Capitals came up short on Monday night against the Kings in Los Angeles. The Caps survived a bumpy first frame and scored the game's first goal midway through the second, but they ultimately weren't able to generate enough offense to support a strong performance in net from Darcy Kuemper, dropping a 4-2 decision at Crypto.com Arena.

The Caps didn't spend enough quality time in the Los Angeles zone, didn't generate much in the way of quality looks at the Kings' net, and they went long stretches without threatening at all offensively.
"We didn't play the game quick enough, we didn't play it fast enough," says Caps coach Peter Laviolette. "We didn't move pucks, or feet or the game quick enough. And when we did, I thought the compete could have been better. We were isolated in battles, and I thought we got outnumbered in battles, and didn't come up with pucks in order to generate, in order to break out, in order to get through the neutral zone, in order to come into the offensive zone."
For the second straight game, the Caps were vastly outplayed in the first period. Two days after being outshot 20-5 and out-attempted 20-9 at even strength in the first 20 minutes of their game against the Sharks in San Jose, the Capitals were outshot 19-3 and out-attempted 26-5 in the first frame of their road trip finale against the Kings. But while the Caps trailed 2-0 after the first period on Saturday against the Sharks, they managed to escape the first unscathed, as Kuemper set aside all 19 shots against his former club.
Facing nearly a full carryover power play at the outset of the second period, the Caps caught a break when Kings winger Kevin Fiala committed an unwise slashing minor on Washington defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk just six seconds into the second, pulling the plug on the Los Angeles man advantage.
The Caps continued to muddle their way through the middle period, expertly killing off a third Los Angeles power play midway through the frame before jumping out to a 1-0 lead on a bit of a broken play just after the midpoint of the period.
Washington gained the zone cleanly, and Sonny Milano fed Rasmus Sandin for a one-timer in the slot. Sandin fanned on the shot, but as he was going down to the ice, he pushed a backhander toward the net, and it rolled through the pads of ex-Caps goalie Pheonix Copley for a 1-0 Washington lead at 11:39.
The goal was Sandin's first in a Caps' uniform, coming just two days after he notched three assists in his Washington debut against San Jose.
"We had a pretty good entry on the play, first off," recounts Sandin. "We tried to get the puck to the middle there twice, and I missed the puck there the first time. I had a guy tight on me, and luckily I got a little touch on it, and luckily it went in."
Less than two minutes later, the Kings answered back when their own trade deadline addition to the blueline recorded his first goal in a Los Angeles uniform. With the Kings peppering Kuemper from in tight, the Caps' netminder made an excellent stop on Fiala from the slot, but Vladislav Gavrikov buried the rebound to knot the score at 13:18.
In the waning seconds of the middle period, the Kings took their first lead of the game, going up 2-1 when Phillip Danault deflected Viktor Arvidsson's center point drive past Kuemper with 31.5 seconds left in the frame.
Los Angeles again opened the third with a chunk - 91 seconds worth - of power play time, but again the Kings short-circuited their power play, this time by taking a pair of penalties in short succession to put Washington on a 4-on-3 and then a 5-on-3 power play. At 2:31 of the third, the Caps pulled even on the two-man advantage when Alex Ovechkin pounded a shot past Copley from his left dot office after a perfect tee up from Sandin.
"I put it there like three or four times, and he went to change his gloves," says Sandin of the Ovechkin goal. "And the first shot right after, just bang, right up there. I didn't do too much. That's his signature spot, and it always feels good to set your teammates up."
Ovechkin's goal was his 36th of the season and the 816th of his NHL career. Copley became the 169th unique goaltending victim Ovechkin has scored against, and Sandin became the first defenseman in Washington franchise history to record five points in his first two games with the team.
With the game all even early in the third, the Caps needed the next goal, but they couldn't pull it off. Sixteen seconds after the Caps won an offensive-zone draw following a Los Angeles icing, but they soon turned it over and the Kings took off on the rush. Adrian Kempe sent Quinton Byfield into Washington ice, and Byfield carried deep before throwing a perfect reverse feed to the front for defenseman Mikey Anderson, whose shot from the slot put the Kings on top for good, 3-2 at 7:52 of the third.
Later in the period, the Kings again shot themselves in the foot, taking a penalty while on the power play for the third time in the game. In the final 15 and a half minutes of the third, Washington was able to generate only two shots on the Los Angeles net at even strength, and it was unable to get any shots on Copley late in the game with Kuemper pulled for an extra attacker.
Kempe accounted for the 4-2 final with an empty-net goal at 19:58, his 30th of the season.
"It was not good in the first," says Laviolette. "It got better in the second and the third, but that's a fast team and they play a fast game. And you find yourself defending and just trying to catch their game, and we just weren't able to do that.
"Like I said, it was mildly better in the second and the third, but I don't think we dictated that game at all. We dictated the second and third periods in San Jose. Tonight, we did not. We needed to move things faster, and we needed to compete better."