Kings open important road trip with loss to Leon Draisaitl and Oilers
Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard each had a goal and an assist as the Edmonton Oilers beat the Kings 4-2 on Monday night to snap a three-game skid.
Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins also scored and Connor McDavid had two assists to help the Oilers move two points up on the Kings for third place in the Pacific Division. Stuart Skinner stopped 38 shots.
“It’s probably good timing the way our game was trending lately, to have a game where you have to play simple and stay in it the whole 60,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “We did a great job of that.”
Oilers defenseman Mattias Ekholm agreed, adding: “I think this is more of the recipe that we are looking for. ... It was a 60-minute game for us and maybe we haven’t had too many of them as of late. This was as close as we have gotten in the last 10 games or so.”
Despite not playing their best, the Kings earned two critical points in a shootout win over the Ducks ahead of an important divisional road trip.
Trevor Moore and Alex Laferriere scored for the Kings, who had won five of their previous six games. David Rittich finished with 27 saves.
“We were in a good spot going into the third and they had a better jump than we did at the start and we couldn’t get our momentum back there,” Moore said. “We took a couple of penalties and after that it was a tough night. I thought we had a good 40 going and it goes to show you how fast it can flip, but we’ll rebound.”
The Kings started the scoring 6:45 into the opening period as the puck came off the back boards to Quinton Byfield and he shoveled it to Moore, who beat Skinner with a wrist shot for his 22nd goal of the season. It was the eighth time in the last 11 games that the Oilers allowed the first goal.
Edmonton came close to tying it with seven minutes left in the first period as Hyman had Rittich beat with a backhand shot, but rang the puck off the post.
Hyman made up for that miss with 24 seconds to play in the first, taking a feed from McDavid at the left faceoff dot and blasting a one-timer past Rittich for his team-high 38th — extending his goal-scoring streak to five games. McDavid extended his home point streak to a career-high 23 games.
The Kings moved back in front at 7:34 of the second period as Oilers defenseman Bouchard badly missed a check to allow a two-on-one, which was finished off by a glove-side shot by Laferriere for his eighth.
The Oilers evened it up again on the power play with four minutes to play in the second as Bouchard sent a shot from the point that was deftly deflected by Draisaitl for his 29th.
Bouchard continued to atone for his earlier gaffe, putting the Oilers in front for the first time just 1:25 into the third as he unleashed a bomb from the point that beat Rittich high to the glove side for his 15th, moving him into a tie with Calgary’s MacKenzie Weegar for the league lead for goals by a defenseman.
The Oilers put the game away with 3:29 to play as Connor Brown made a great pass up to Nugent-Hopkins heading to the net with speed and he chipped home his 16th.
“I think this was good for us, having a victory against a quality opponent and especially a team we were tied with going into it,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said.
Up next for the Kings: at Calgary on Tuesday night in the second of a three-game trip.
