LOS ANGELES –– The Kings have been pedestrian in some areas but they’ve been magical in others, specifically in the third period and at Crypto.com Arena, where they won their ninth straight home game by defeating the Tampa Bay Lightning, 2-1, on Saturday evening.
Mikey Anderson and Adrian Kempe each lit the lamp for the Kings, with Kempe breaking a 1-1 stalemate that spanned most of the match. Darcy Kuemper turned in a superb performance with 34 saves, including several with a high degree of difficulty. Trevor Moore and Trevor Lewis both returned from injury, with Lewis skating in his 1,000th career game.
Victor Hedman scored just 1:09 into the game for Tampa Bay, which was quieted by Kuemper for the rest of the night. Andrei Vasilevskiy pumped the brakes on 19 shots.
Game No. 1000 for Lewis, a 2006 first-rounder who won two Stanley Cups with the Kings, was all the more remarkable because of the way Lewis reached the milestone. A trusted checker and penalty killer with limited scoring punch (101 goals and 232 points) and just six NHL fights, his offensive totals were lower than any other forward that reached the 1,000-game mark without accumulating at least 2,000 penalty minutes.
Saturday marked the Kings’ ninth consecutive victory at home, three shy of the franchise record, set in the 1992-93 season when the Kings reached the Stanley Cup Final (the all-time record is the 2011-12 Detroit Red Wings’ 23 straight).
Though the Kings owed the very opportunity to win the game in the third period to Kuemper and the work of Anderson with partner Vladislav Gavrikov, they snatched two points from the third period.
After failing to convert on one rush, they generated another. The Lightning’s Nathan Perbix took a spill in the neutral zone to give the Kings an odd-man attack momentarily. Perbix caught up to Alex Turcotte and attempted to tie up his stick, but Turcotte managed to slip the puck to a trailing Kempe, who rifled a shot home for his team-leading 19th goal of the campaign with 5:48 to play.
The second period saw nothing in the way of scoring, though the Kings did earn the frame’s only power play, as Tampa did in the first. Having inserted three new players –– Moore, Lewis and defenseman Andreas Englund in his first action in nearly two months –– the Kings looked disjointed more often than not.
Through 40 minutes, Natural Stat Trick scored Tampa Bay as having 88% of the high-danger chances in the contest and a 72% share of expected goals, despite the actual score remaining 1-1.
In the first period, the Kings were outshot 11-4, and Anderson scored two goals: one for each side.
Just 69 seconds into the match, Hedman’s low-flying shot from distance banked off Anderson’s stick and into the net.
Anderson would have that favor returned when his own long-range rip, off a faceoff win by Phillip Danault, glanced off Brayden Point’s skate before beating Vasilevskiy to the far post 7:58 after the opening faceoff.