Nic Dowd was great tonight, wasn’t he? Rest of the team wasn’t too shabby, either, but they took five penalties and couldn’t beat Devan Dubnyk for the vast majority of the evening. Wild 2, Kings 1. Rank em!
(Apologies for the outdated photos, the ranker is having some hiccups tonight.)
A couple years we wrote an article about LA’s penchant for losing games in which they dramatically outshot the opponent. In 2013-14, the Kings lost SEVEN games in which they had more than 35 shots and allowed fewer than 20. (That was an NHL record.) This year? Counting this one, only two! So as much as this one sucked, it hasn’t happened a whole lot this year, and that is nice.
Tyler Toffoli’s goal was great, Dowd got crucial late shifts and they were totally justified, and the top four defensemen had a killer showing. And yet, the Kings lost. We’ll explain in the recap.