The Los Angeles Kings are riding a four-game winning streak and have won nine in a row at home.
But with a lengthy stretch between games as they prepare to host the Calgary Flames on Wednesday night, the Kings had an intense practice session Monday.
“We’ve only practiced three times as a team in probably the last month … we had that long road trip, break over Christmas, so (this) was a chance just to get out,” Los Angeles coach Jim Hiller told lakingsinsider.com. “Practice was similar to our preseason practices, where we went 50 minutes hard, worked on a lot, got up and down the ice. I’m hoping that’s just going to get us back reset mentally.”
The Kings are coming off a 2-1 victory over the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday, but they know it was far from a top-shelf performance amid a 12-2-2 run. Los Angeles, however, will look to complete a perfect five-game homestand and build on the third-longest home winning streak in franchise history.
“The way we won those games; some have been a complete 60 minutes where we feel like we’re on top of it the whole time,” defenseman Mikey Anderson said. “A game like (Saturday), maybe don’t have it for majority of the game, but still find a way to get one when we need it and lock it down and then come away with the win. So I feel like it’s been a mix of everything, but again, that’s guys pulling different directions and a sign of a good team.”
Forward Adrian Kempe has goals in three consecutive games and is riding a five-game point streak with three goals and three assists.
The Flames arrive in Los Angeles after claiming a 3-2 overtime win over the host Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday, the first half of a road trip with their moms on the trip.
“It’s always nice to get a win, especially in front of the moms,” Calgary forward Nazem Kadri said. “I think it’s a little more extra incentive. It sounds like they had themselves a bit of a day, so it’s nice to see them enjoying themselves.”
Calgary snapped a two-game losing streak to pull even in points with the Vancouver Canucks for the Western Conference’s second wild-card spot. The Flames, however, have played one more game than the Canucks.
But even amid those defeats, the Flames believed they were playing well enough to win.
Against Anaheim, they opened the scoring when a point shot banked off defenseman MacKenzie Weegar and into the net. The winning goal was a case of Anaheim’s Jacob Trouba making an ill-advised clearing attempt that ended up bounding to Jonathan Huberdeau in front of an open net to convert.
“We’ve kinda found a way to get on the short end of the stick,” Weegar said. “When you get a couple bounces — off my pad like that, I don’t even know how that overtime goal went in — those bounces are great, but we earned those chances. We worked hard for those chances. The game’s fair, so I thought we worked hard. We were on the other side of those bounces, and we’ll take them when we can.”
There was no immediate update on the status of Flames center Connor Zary, who left the game after a knee-on-knee hit from Drew Helleson, for which he was assessed a major penalty and game misconduct.
Zary is third on the team in both goals (10) and points (22).
–Field Level Media
