Kings interim coach Jim Hiller reiterated that his team was still very much in a playoff race on Monday night, when the Kings missed the starter’s pistol as the Minnesota Wild blew past them, 3-1, at Crypto.com Arena to snap their eight-game home winning streak.
“You can describe it a bunch of different ways. Not enough intensity. Not enough emotion. Not competitive enough. There are a bunch of words, they all mean the same thing: [We] didn’t have ’er,” Hiller said.
Monday’s loss placed the Kings in peril of dropping from third in the Pacific Division to the second wild-card position, which would pit them against the vaunted Dallas Stars, the very likely No. 1 overall seed in the Western Conference.
The Kings are one point ahead of the fourth-place Vegas Golden Knights, who also have a game in hand on them. The Kings will host Chicago on Thursday night for their regular-season finale. The lowly Blackhawks will have played Tuesday in Vegas, where the Golden Knights will conclude their campaign against the Ducks on Thursday. Though they’ve been a bottom-dweller again, the Ducks have beaten Vegas twice in three matchups this season.
“I don’t think it matters who we play. Anyone that’s making the postseason is a really good team,” Mikey Anderson said. “Whoever it is, we need to be ready to play with probably a little more intensity than we had today if we want to have some success.”
Blake Lizotte scored the Kings’ lone goal. Captain Anze Kopitar (“something nagging”) returned to action, relegating Pierre-Luc Dubois to the fourth line once more. Cam Talbot stopped 25 shots as the Kings fell to Minnesota for the first time in three meetings this season.
For the Wild, leading scorer Kirill Kaprizov further cemented his reputation as a thorn in the Kings’ side by scoring a goal and setting up another for Ryan Hartman. Marco Rossi added two assists, including one for Matt Boldy to open the scoring before Filip Gustavsson shut the door with 23 saves.
With 5:24 remaining in the match, Lizotte snapped a shot through traffic off the rush to break up what would have been Gustavsson’s fourth shutout of the season. Lizotte, a Minnesotan, had his goal set up by two former Wild players, Talbot and Kevin Fiala.
Kaprizov had already given the Kings a cheeky grin and a certain loss after he made it 3-0 by banking the puck off Talbot’s back and into the net from below the goal line with 11:35 to play.
“I tried it a couple times tonight. I just saw he was a little bit [low],” Kaprizov said.
Just like the opening 20 minutes, the second period saw the Kings grazed by one bullet and hit squarely by another, with the 2-0 count marking the 11th time this season that Kings had been shut out through two stanzas. They moved to 2-9 in that situation.
Kaprizov battled Phillip Danault and Matt Roy for a point-blank push toward an open net that inexplicably stayed out of the twine. Later, Kaprizov would put more oomph into a hit than he was able to into that shot when he stunned Fiala with a hip check during a rush in the third period.
Kaprizov had finally secured that elusive two-goal lead when he connected with Hartman a mere 4.7 seconds before the second intermission. Joel Eriksson Ek stripped Kopitar at the blue line, sending Kaprizov and Hartman ahead on a two-on-one break. Kaprizov cut inside on Anderson as he lofted a saucer pass across to Hartman, who waited out Talbot momentarily before hoisting the puck over the goalie’s drooping glove.
Late in the first period, Minnesota defenseman Alex Goligoski nearly scored his first goal since March 15 of last year when he got a breakaway after exiting the penalty box. In a hairy sequence for the Kings, Talbot dashed out of his crease to challenge, only to miss on a poke check attempt and be evaded by Goligoski, who then had an open net in his sights. Jordan Spence – who was playing in his 100th NHL game – managed to force him to circle the net, where the stick of Trevor Moore narrowly averted a goal.
Goligoski could have made it 2-0 after Boldy’s power-play goal. Former Kings prospect Brock Faber ignited the play by beating Moore one-on-one to get the Kings on their heels. Another rookie standout, Rossi, received the puck and found Boldy, who hit the offensive blue line with speed. He slipped the puck under Roy’s stick and then through Talbot’s legs to give the Wild a 1-0 lead with 5:46 on the clock.
“We played well, from the start to the end,” Boldy said. “It was a pretty complete game with some nice goals, some good defensive plays, some good blocks and a little bit of everything.”
The Kings’ lethargic showing was all too reminiscent of the January swoon that nearly put them out of postseason contention and cost head coach Todd McLellan his job.
“You can’t be taking steps back,” Anderson said. “We got to keep building ’cause you don’t get any time after the year to build your game up. You’re jumping right into it, so just making sure we’re ready to go. We get one more try before we need to be ready.”