Kings Win Third Straight In 2-1 Win over Flames

Added on Dec 10, 2010 by J Merrill in

NHL

The LA Kings squeak out a 2-1 win against their rivals the Calgary Flames, and turn their win streak into 3 games. Kyle Clifford scored his first NHL goal, Anze Kopitar got the eventual game-winner and Jonathan Quick made 26 saves as the Kings held on to win.

Clifford, a 19-year-old rookie, opened the scoring 12:08 into the game when he crashed the crease just as Wayne Simmonds’ pass came across the front of the net. The puck hit Clifford’s skate and caromed past Miikka Kiprusoff to put the Kings ahead to stay. He was just happy to get his first goal, he said “It was probably the ugliest first goal in history. But they don’t ask how, just how many. This is one.” And when asked what he’ll do with the puck, Clifford said: “I’m going to send it back home to my parents. Cheap Christmas present.”

Anze Kopitar, who netted his eleventh of the season, was happy with the win and happy how the team played. It was also their first game since the big win against the Redwings. “We knew it was going to be a good challenge, to see how we were going to respond after the four or five days off,” Kopitar said. “Maybe there was a little bit of rust in the first few minutes, but I thought that as soon as everybody got their first shift in, I thought we were pretty sharp throughout the whole 60 minutes.”

The Kings have had a hard time winning against the flames the past few seasons. They had only beaten the Flames once in their last nine meetings, and thats including a 3-1 loss to them on the first Sunday night of the season. They have now only won six of their last twenty-two meetings since the 2005-06 season. Defenseman Drew Doughty said after the game, “In my three years here, I think that was the best 60 minutes we’ve played against that team. Every time, I don’t know what it is, but we come out slow against them, and if we have the lead, we lose it, or if we’re losing, we never get it back. So it was definitely good to play tonight.”

Doughty is excited about the win, but isn’t forgetting the long week ahead of them. He said, “We’re obviously still not happy about all those losses, but we’re past that, and now that we’re on a roll we just want to continue this. We’ve got a big game Saturday, and then we go right into Detroit on Monday. So both of those games are conference games, and must-wins.”

Los Angeles coach Terry Murray thinks the Flames are always a tough team, and he thinks highly of them. He said of the Flames “They’ve got some of the real tough guys in the league. Whenever you’re playing against top goaltenders, you’ve got to get to the net. If you get pucks there, good things will happen.”

Calgary Coach Brett Sutter played well, but they obviously have some changes to make. “I thought our defensemen were under siege a lot, and I didn’t think our forwards had a good game. We weren’t strong on our fore check, and we allowed them to fore check hard on us. We have to regroup and get going again. It sounds like a broken record, but that’s the only way we can do it.”

The LA Kings(16-10-0 32pts), who are now 2nd in Pacific Division, will face the Minnesota Wild (12-11-4, 28pts) at home. The Calgary Flames (12-15-2,26pts), who are 4th in Northwest Division, will face the Anaheim Ducks (14-13-4, 32pts) tonight.