RECAP: Kings 2, Panthers 1

LOS ANGELES – Sam Reinhart scored again, but the Florida Panthers saw their winning streak snapped at five games with a 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings at Crypto.com Arena on Thursday.

“We were able to stick with it and give ourselves a fighting chance,” said Reinhart, who’s currently tied for first in the NHL with 13 goals. “You give them credit, they’re a team that when they have the lead it’s not easy to come back on them. I think they were a little bit more assertive early on, a little bit quicker on pucks.  We fell behind. [We need to] just come out with that mentality earlier.”

Still sitting pretty at 10-5-1 in the standings, the Panthers certainly played well enough to come out on top in the City of Angels, but were kept in check by a hot goaltender and a stingy penalty kill.

Going 0-for-5 on the power play, the Panthers had 11 scoring chances and 1.55 expected goals with the man advantage against the Kings, but simply couldn’t get anything past Cam Talbot.

Of Talbot’s 30 saves, 10 came on the penalty kill.

“We had a few good chances to score,” captain Aleksander Barkov said when asked about coming up empty with the extra attacker. “I don’t think we did anything bad there. We moved the puck, we got pucks to the net and we had some chances. We just have to stick with it.”

Jumping on the Panthers right after the puck dropped, the Kings struck just 1:20 into the game when Kevin Fiala lifted a backhand shot over Sergei Bobrovsky on a 2-on-1 rush to make it 1-0.

Adding to the lead for Los Angeles in the second period, Anze Kopitar teed up a pass from Fiala on the power play and blasted a one-timer into the twine from the slot to make it 2-0 at 13:53.

Playing with five defenseman for much of the middle frame, Josh Mahura was not the bench to start the period for the Panthers. Although he briefly came back for one shift from 8:13-9:36, he then exited again and did not return due to what is being labeled as a lower-body injury.

“We don’t think it’s significant, but we won’t know more until tomorrow,” head coach Paul Maurice said.

Finally breaking through for the Panthers in the third period, Reinhart, the NHL’s reigning First Star of the Week, took a pass from Carter Verhaeghe and fired an absolute rocket of a shot past Talbot from the inner half of the right circle to cut the deficit down to 2-1 at 11:45.

With the goal, Reinhart extended his point streak to six games.

In search of the game-tying goal, the Panthers threw everything they had at Talbot as the clock started to wind down. After pulling Bobrovsky for a 6-on-5 advantage with just over two minutes left in regulation, they generated some good looks, including two shots on goal and one more that was blocked.

Unfortunately, the Kings held on to lock down the 2-1 win.

“It’s hard to play from behind, especially a couple goals in the third period,” Barkov said. “It wasn’t our best effort today, but [we] somehow found a way to get close. We’ll take only good things from this and learn to play when things aren’t going the right way.”

THEY SAID IT

“They’re a good team, but our I think our effort wasn’t as good as it should’ve been against that type of team. We didn’t work that hard to get to the spots where we can score. Stuff like that. We should’ve played harder and could’ve played harder, but it’s over now. We’ve just got to focus on the next one.” – Aleksander Barkov on his takeaways from tonight’s loss

“I think we were trying to do a little bit too much. Give them credit, they kind of bring that out of you. That’s what we try and bring out of other teams. I think they stuck to their game plan a little bit better early on. Then we simplified. That’s going to happen in this league.” – Sam Reinhart on the Panthers struggling to find goals against the Kings

“I’m not complaining about the game. I don’t think we were great, and you’re not winning every game. If we’re going to lose 2-1 in a game where maybe we feel we could be a little sharper, then we just move on.” – Paul Maurice on looking ahead to the next game

CATS STATS

- The Panthers led 2.51-2.02 in expected goals in all situations.

- Florida led 16-7 in shot attempts when Evan Rodriges was deployed at 5-on-5.

- Matthew Tkachuk fired off a team-high six shots on goal.

- Dmitry Kulikov led the Panthers with three hits.

- Anton Lundell went 9-for-15 (60%) in the faceoff circle.

- Sam Reinhart and Niko Mikkola each blocked four shots.         

- Oliver Ekman-Larsson saw a team-high 28:22 of ice time.

- Sergei Bobrovsky made five high-danger saves, per NaturalStatTrick.com.

WHAT’S NEXT?

It’s almost time to say goodbye to the Golden State.

With just one stop left on their three-game road trip, the Panthers will close the book on their first back-to-back of the season with a battle against the Anaheim Ducks at Honda Center on Friday at 10 p.m. ET.