The disappointment of falling to the Sharks on Tuesday was short lived as the Kings rebounded just 24 hours later beating the Vegas Golden Knights 6-3 on home ice. It was an impressive showing for the Kings as they took down the red hot 7-2-1 Pacific Division leaders who entered the night on a four-game winning streak and a five-game point streak. One Golden Knights streak the Kings did help extend was their road losing streak as they still search for their first win away from Sin City, now 0-3-1 on the season.
The Kings were able to jump ahead on Wednesday with a pair of first period goals and did so in quick fashion. Just past the halfway point of the period, a Quinton Byfield stretch pass to Warren Foegele just failed to connect, but forced Golden Knights goaltender Ilya Samsonov to play the puck. With Foegele hard on the forecheck, Samsonov botched the clearing attempt and pushed the puck right back to the Kings forward. Foegele reacted quickly by spinning and putting the puck back on net with his backhand through Samsonov’s five hole, giving the Kings a 1-0 lead. The Kings needed just 42 seconds to double their lead when Adrian Kempe rifled a wrist shot through an Alex Turcotte middle lane drive moving screen.
The Kings scored another pair of goals in the second period and like the first period, they did so striking twice in less than minute. Again coming around the midway point of the period, the Kings extended their lead to 3-0 when Alex Laferriere notched his team-leading sixth goal of the season with the help of assists from Mikey Anderson and the aforementioned Byfield. Coming just 44 seconds after that, Brandt Clarke made a sensational spinning play in the slot and set up Anze Kopitar backdoor to put the Kings up 4-0. The Golden Knights did get on the board late in the period with former King Tanner Pearson burying a goal to make it 4-1 going into the final 20 minutes of regulation.
Enter period three and the Kings scored the first two goals again. Scoring on the power play, Kopitar and Clarke set up Kevin Fiala who returned to the lineup after being a healthy scratch in Tuesday’s game against the Sharks due to oversleeping and missing a team meeting after an alarm failed to go off. More importantly, the assist for Kopitar was yet another milestone for the captain as he reached 800 career helpers. Both Fiala and Clarke factored in on the Kings sixth and final goal as they picked up assists on Joel Edmundson’s point shot goal, his third of the season. With Clarke’s three-point night (0-3=3), he has now scored 11 points through the team’s first 11 games of the season. Clarke becomes the third defenseman in King’s history aged 21 years old or younger to record 11 points through the team’s first 11 games to start a season, joining Larry Murphy (2x, 4-7=11 in 1980-81 and 5-8=13 in 1981-82) and Rob Blake (2-11=13 in 1990-91). A pair of Pavel Dorofeyev goals came late in the period, but no harm was done and the Kings picked up the win.
Darcy Kuemper returned to the Kings net and stopped 23 of 26 shots to improve his record to 3-0-2.
