The Los Angeles Kings and the Vegas Golden Knights were the final teams to participate in the Frozen Frenzy on Tuesday night. It was a night that the NHL had scheduled every team to play but will be a night that the Kings will want to forget as they lost to the Golden Knights by a final score of 6-1.
After an inconsistent road trip to open the season, this game against Vegas was just another example of that up-and-down performance. The Kings entered this game winning their last two games against Montreal and Anaheim while outscoring them a combined 8-2.
These are some notes and takeaways for the LA Kings from the game against the Golden Knights.
Los Angeles Kings struggle with penalty kill in the first period
The Kings once again got off to a slow start, which has become a bit of a theme this season, and gave up three goals in roughly the first 15 minutes of the game. The first two goals were on power plays by the Golden Knights as the Kings struggled to defend and clear the front of the net. Tomas Hertl and Mark Stone both were able to beat David Rittich by redirecting shots.
The good news was that the Kings didn't give the Golden Knights a man advantage the rest of the night because they clearly looked outmatched the two times they tried to kill the penalty.
Los Angeles Kings power play needs a lot of work
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Kings could not take advantage of their power play chances as they would have four over the course of this game. However, they would not be able to beat Ilya Samsonov and were only able to muster five shots on their power play.
They have now gone four straight games without a power play goal even though they have had 12 opportunities. The last power play goal by the Kings was against the Ottawa Senators in their 8-7 loss.
Warren Foegele scores his first goal of the season
In the second period, the Kings looked to settle down a bit and were able to keep the game within reach as the Vegas Golden Knights were not able to add to their lead. In fact, after two periods the Kings would cut their deficit thanks to a goal by Warren Foegele.
Without question, the bright spot for the offense to this point of the season has been the line of Warren Foegele-Alex Turcotte-Alex Laferriere. These three have been doing an excellent job of creating quality chances and have been the most consistent group night in and night out. On Tuesday night against the Golden Knights, the Kings had 33 shots with 10 of them coming from this line.
It will be interesting moving forward if Jim Hiller sticks with this line because Alex Laferriere began the season with the top line. However, Hiller switched him for Quinton Byfield as part of a complete shakeup across all the lines earlier in the season. It is unknown if the Kings move Byfield back to center but one thing they shouldn't do is move Laferriere off this line.