LOS ANGELES — Thursday was Grateful Dead night at Crypto.com Arena, and the Kings went on a long, strange trip of their own as they fell to the Winnipeg Jets, 6-4, in a game in which any statistic but the final score suggested they would have won handily.
The Kings got goals from forwards Arthur Kaliyev, Blake Lizotte, Gabe Vilardi and Trevor Moore, with Moore adding an assist. Jonathan Quick made just 13 of 18 saves on a night when Corsi, Fenwick and every other possession metric heavily favored the Kings, who have lost three of their last four games.
Centers Mark Scheifele, Adam Lowry and Pierre-Luc Dubois scored for Winnipeg, as did defenseman Nate Schmidt before winger Axel Jonsson-Fjallby scored the game-winner and Blake Wheeler added an empty-net goal. Morgan Barron had two assists and Lowry added one. Connor Hellebuyck stopped 40 shots as the Jets won consecutive games for the first time this season.
Kings coach Todd McLellan avoided laying the blame at the feet of any one player or component of his team, but he acknowledged that the Kings’ goaltending needed to be better and that his late-game promotion of Vilardi in place of first-liner Kevin Fiala was because he was irked by some elements of the first line’s performance.
Overall, however, McLellan pointed to a team-wide and staff-wide identity crisis, where a team that checked tightly for much of last season and even as recently as Tuesday in a victory over Tampa Bay was tending toward a “run-and-gun” game.
“If that’s how we want to play and that’s what we’re going to keep trying, we’re probably going to keep getting the same results,” McLellan said.
Winnipeg sealed the Kings’ fate late, first by drawing a penalty and then when Wheeler lofted the puck into the vacated cage for an insurance goal.
Jonsson-Fjallby, who had drawn a penalty leading to a power-play goal in the prior period, tipped a puck to the far side with 5:37 left to put the Jets ahead for good.
“I like the way that we finished off the game. We got a power-play goal, a short-handed goal, a lot of different ways guys were getting on the board,” Schmidt said. “Axel getting a goal in the last five minutes, that’s awesome, you could see how fired up the guys were.”
Less than five minutes into the final period, the Kings had evened the score when center Phillip Danault stripped the puck as Winnipeg tried to exit its own zone. He sent a pass ahead to Moore behind the defense, and the Thousand Oaks native buried his first goal of the season between Hellebuyck’s pads.
In the second period, the Kings had earned several sterling opportunities, including wingers Fiala and Adrian Kempe nearly connecting for a goal off the hop, as they continued to carry play.
But they were unable to extend their lead and instead found themselves deadlocked through 39 minutes and trailing through 40 after giving up a goal with 1:05 left. It was Schmidt’s seeing-eye wrist shot through traffic that gave the Jets a 4-3 lead.
With just under four minutes left in the middle period, Winnipeg converted on the power play when Dubois stepped out from below the goal line to sweep the puck past Quick on the far side.
In an ostensibly domineering first period, the Kings drew four penalties and out-shot Winnipeg 17-6. Yet they narrowly escaped with a one-goal edge despite generating 95 percent of the period’s scoring chances and dominating possession.
They scored soon after their third power play. Fiala turned in a dangerous shift. He had a strong scoring chance with 5:39 to play and then created a goal 12 seconds later when his shot from the slot hit Schmidt’s stick before being redirected again by Vilardi for his team-leading sixth goal of the season.
Before that, the Kings had converted on their second man-advantage opportunity to knot the score at 1-all and then extended their lead at even strength 66 seconds later.
Moore set up the power-play goal not only with a pass to Kaliyev for a primary assist but by occupying two defenders as the Kings gained the offensive zone. That freed Kaliyev to zoom forward and flick a low shot to the far side from the right faceoff dot for his second goal this season.
Then, a bit of grit from the fourth line gave the Kings their first lead of the night as some dogged forechecking led to Lizotte stuffing home his second goal in as many games.
“It’s a lot different L.A. Kings team than we’re used to seeing. They’ve got a lot of guys who can motor and make plays,” Schmidt said. “We learned very quickly, after the first 10 minutes, that you can’t get into that kind of game with them.”
Yet the Kings also saw defenseman Dylan DeMelo miss an all-but-empty net for the equalizer after they had ceded a short-handed goal in transition to Lowry with less than two minutes remaining.
“You’re still up one but you certainly don’t want to give up anything. In our minds we should be extending our lead versus giving up shorties,” team captain Anze Kopitar said.
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And that short-handed goal was not the most abrupt or unwelcome turnaround of the period.
The Kings hemmed the Jets in their zone for the first five minutes of the match and also posted the game’s first five shots on goal. Yet they ended up surrendering the game’s first score. After weathering a storm in the defensive zone, Scheifele stole the puck from Danault and darted ahead for a clean breakaway that culminated in his beating Quick with a rising wrist shot 5:03 into the contest.
It was the first of several improbable bounce-back moments for Winnipeg.
“I don’t want to say that we got fortunate tonight, but it’s tough to win without your best effort every night,” Lowry said.
NOTES
Kings winger Viktor Arvidsson returned to the lineup from an illness. … Center Quinton Byfield was a last-minute scratch with an illness of his own, opening the door for Jaret Anderson-Dolan to play his second straight game. … The Kings have dropped four of their last five meetings with Winnipeg, surrendering 20 goals in the process.
UP NEXT
The Kings host the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday in the finale of their three-game homestand.