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The Los Angeles Kings winning streak improves to eight in a row as they defeated the Carolina Hurricanes in overtime on Saturday night.
Tanner Pearson cleaned up his own rebound off Canes goalie Scott Darling and put it in the net to give the Kings a 3-2 victory.
The Kings are now 7-3 when extra time is needed and scoring important late goals has been a penchant of this team all season.
“If we want a script, you want the lead, you want to keep the lead, and if you have the lead in the third period, you don’t want to give it up,… said John Stevens after the game. “That sounds good in theory, but it’s not going to happen all the time and this group understands that.…
After a tight first period, the Kings drew first blood in the second when Tyler Toffoli and Anze Kopitar scored to give the Kings the two goal advantage.
In the third period, however, the Hurricanes speed and youth took over as they got goals from Victor Rask midway through the period and then Elias Lindholm scored with two and a half minutes left to tie the game.
The Kings were on their heels in the third period as they were outshot 14-5 in the frame and continued to be out chanced in overtime. Jonathan Quick had to be his all world self in the game by stopping 32 of 34 shots in order to give the Kings time to regain their composure for Pearson’s winning goal.
“We had a lead and give it up, but we still have an opportunity to get two points,… explained Stevens. “There’s a big chunk of the group that knows how to win, and are comfortable playing in tight games.…
“They’re not going to sit there and hang their head because things didn’t go our way or we let the situation slip on us a little bit because there’s still time left on the clock to make it right.…
An interesting development during the game was a shuffling of lines that found Toffoli, Kopitar, and Pearson together. This is a combination that we generally haven’t seen throughout the season but it was an adjustment made based on the way the game was going.
“We just thought in the first period, the match-up was too much time in our zone, and we thought [Pearson] and [Toffoli] had some really good jump,… Stevens elaborated later. “[Kopitar’s] a good player no matter who you put him with, but when those guys are going, it really helped us.…
“We just thought a little bit of a switch could help us, and it did.…
Coming up for the Kings, they want to continue their win streak as they take a trip through the Metropolitan Division starting on Tuesday against the New Jersey Devils. The Devils are coming off a 5-2 loss to the New York Rangers and have started to slow down a little bit after a similar hot start to the Kings. They are around the .500 mark in their last 10 games, but that can easily change quickly, as we’ve seen with the Kings.