The Los Angeles Kings certainly carried their strong play from Wednesday against Vegas into Saturday afternoon’s matchup against the Chicago Blackhawks. The only problem was they couldn’t sustain that effort over 60 minutes.
Three different Blackhawks scored in the third period to erase two LA leads (2-0, 3-2) and force overtime where the Kings generated several unsuccessful high danger looks.
All three Blackhawks shooters beat goalie Darcy Kuemper in the shootout as the Kings came away with only a single point in a game where they likely should have cruised to two.
For the Kings, Alex Laferriere continued his offensive onslaught with his 7th and 8th goals of the season.
Philip Danault finally broke through for his first of the campaign – a goal that felt destined to be the game winner with 8:52 remaining in the 3rd period.
But with 31 seconds left in regulation, Tyler Bertuzzi tied the game on a play that started with a failed clearing attempt from Kuemper and ended with a puck getting through Vladislav Gavrikov and finding Bertuzzi’s stick at the goal mouth.
The Kings dominated shot attempts (60.3%) and high danger attempts (72.73%) throughout the game, holding Chicago to only 0.9 xGoals at even strength. Hockey is a funny game though. LA let the Blackhawks hang around long enough where the momentum could swing on one shot. And that’s exactly what happened at 3:26 of the third period when Nick Foligno fired a puck from the top of the circles that snuck through Kuemper – a goal that the veteran netminder would love to take a mulligan on.
Two minutes later, Craig Smith tied the game at 2 with a quick release that beat Kuemper on the blocker side.
The Kings (6-3-3) will now hit the road for a quick back-to-back set. They face the struggling Nashville Predators (3-6-1) on Wednesday and one of the top teams in the NHL, the Minnesota Wild (7-1-2), on Thursday.
