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The Los Angeles Kings took advantage a five minute power play to power through the Edmonton Oilers 5-0 on Tuesday night.
At the end of the second period, Patrick Maroon hit Drew Doughty with a hit to the head which landed him with a five minute major and a game misconduct. The Kings, who were leading 1-0 at that point, went on to score three goals on that power play to put the game out of reach from the Oilers.
Doughty left the ice after the hit as per concussion protocol and was assessed between the second and third periods before returning in the third. Derek Forbort dropped the gloves with Maroon to defend his fallen defense partner, which is something that has to be done when the camaraderie of a team is involved.
“Forbert did an amazing job standing up for me and standing up for the entire team,… said Doughty after the game. “When stuff like that happens your team just comes together, and then scoring three goals on the power play to really shove it up their butts was really awesome.…
“He just got me right in the head and I didn’t have the puck,… said Doughty. “That’s why I was so shocked by it. But, I’ve known Maroon a long time and he’s just trying to finish a hit and I don’t know that he meant to try and hurt me.…
“I forgive him and that’s it.…
Despite Doughty’s forgiveness, Maroon was suspended by the NHL for two games for the hit.
The bright side to all this is the Kings got a chance to really take advantage of a weakness of the Oilers, while working on a weakness of their own.
Going into Tuesday’s game the Kings ranked 24th on the power play with it converting 15.9% of the time. However, after taking on the Oilers and their league worst penalty kill, the Kings now are ranked 21st on the man advantage converting 17.6% of the time.
I suppose going three for six on the power play helps.
The “go ahead goal… for the Kings didn’t come until after the midway point of this game. After some back-and-forth chances by both team, Andy Andreoff received a the puck on a tee during a two-on-one and put it past Came Talbot to take all-important first goal.
At the start of the third period and the Kings on the power play due to Maroon’s hit, Trevor Lewis tipped in Marian Gaborik’s shot in the slot to make it 2-0.
On the same power play, Dustin Brown cleaned up the rebound off Tanner Pearson’s shot to make the score 3-0. Then less than a minute after that, Adrian Kempe took advantage of a funny hop off the boards to nudge the puck past Talbot to get the score to 4-0.
For good measure with a minute and a half left in the game, Brown scored his second of the game off a two-on-one to get the final 5-0 score.
“I thought it was a really close game, and then the power play really turned it there,… explained John Stevens. “I really liked what happened there because number one, you get a teammate stand up for a teammate, and then the power play dug in and we got some production out of it.…
“It was the difference in the game, but it was a good response from the team.…
The Kings will continue their Western Canada road trip on Thursday when they take on the Calgary Flames. This will be Calgary’s first game of the New Year, but they have lost three of their last four games and haven’t won in regulation since December 20th. The two teams have faced each other once this season way back on October 11th where the Flames gave the Kings their first loss of the season, 4-3 in overtime.