Another night meant another one-goal game for the Kings as they lost to the Ottawa Senators 3-2 in overtime at Crypto.com Arena Sunday.
Of their NHL-leading 11 one-goal-margin matches, the Kings have won seven, tying them with five other franchises for the most single-goal victories.
Winger Arthur Kaliyev tallied twice on the power play and center Phillip Danault earned assists on both goals, giving him five points in his last four games. Jonathan Quick was the busier netminder, making 36 saves.
Wingers Brady Tkachuk, Alex DeBrincat and Claude Giroux each scored goals for Ottawa, with Tkachuk and Giroux also contributing an assist apiece. Center Tim Stutzle added two helpers. Cam Talbot stopped 25 shots.
“We sure didn’t start the game very well,” Coach Todd McLellan said. “The power play, obviously, gave us some life, it gave us a chance to crawl back into the game … (and) allowed us to find our game as the night went on.”
Yet a mere 20 seconds into overtime, Ottawa finished the job off a long, lofted backhand saucer pass from Stutzle to Giroux, who had snuck behind defenseman Drew Doughty. He finished a breakaway with a nifty series of moves that included a fake shot, an abrupt stop and some deft stickhandling to give Quick little chance at a save.
“I just saw an opportunity to get going and it was a great pass by Timmy,” Giroux said.
The third period was played to a scoreless draw with defenseman Sean Durzi’s deke, forward Jaret Anderson-Dolan’s breakaway and winger Viktor Arvidsson’s individual effort to create a scoring chance generating the most excitement for the Kings.
“I thought we adapted, we took it up a notch in the second, certainly a notch again in the third and got it to overtime,” McLellan said.
In the second period, the Sens nearly cashed in on their second power play, which came off the Kings’ second offensive-zone penalty. But Quick robbed Tkachuk from close range and got help from a post to negate a sterling opportunity for winger Drake Batherson.
Instead, it was Kings lighting the lamp for a second time with the man advantage as 2:25 remained in the stanza. Kaliyev delivered again with a far-side snipe from the right circle. It was his sixth power-play tally, equaling his total from all of last season, and his eighth goal overall. Since Kaliyev’s NHL debut in February 2021, his 12 power-play goals are tops among the Kings, with his goals Sunday breaking a tie with Adrian Kempe’s 10 over that stretch.
“He’s got a great shot, he knows where to be, we just tried to find him and today he buried two,” Arvidsson said.
The first half of the second period saw the Kings absorb play five-on-five. Defenseman Sean Walker was rocked by winger Austin Watson and then a partial breakaway for winger Tyler Motte forced Quick and Doughty to go into scramble mode against three successive shot attempts.
Positive momentum from the Kings’ first man-advantage marker proved ephemeral as their equalizer stood for less than two minutes. Winger Kevin Fiala’s undisciplined roughing penalty sent the Sens to their first power play. Tkachuk, who’d already scored, played the role of setup man as he drew defenseman Matt Roy toward him then slipped a pass between Roy’s legs to DeBrincat. The former Chicago Blackhawk narrowly beat Quick with a shot just inside the post for his sixth goal as a Senator.
It was the second unit, which McLellan praised earlier as essentially interchangeable with the top unit for the first time during his four-season tenure, that fed Kaliyev for not one, not two but three one-timers in the span of 70 seconds. The third one connected 10:23 into the frame after a superb puck retrieval by Danault facilitated the goal.
“He’s underrated all over. I think he’s been a leading player for the last couple of years,” said Arvidsson of Danault. “He’s just a worker, he does the dirty work and he gets not enough recognition.”
Ottawa has been one of the top teams in the NHL in terms of high-danger scoring chances, completed passes into the slot and expected goals-for, despite their pedestrian record. They showed more of that offensive potential in the first period, out-shooting the Kings 19-8, generating seven high-danger opportunities to the Kings’ two and earning a 1-0 lead.
Just under five minutes into the game, the visitors opened the scoring. Defenseman Thomas Chabot’s shot ricocheted off defenseman Alex Edler and then the end boards before coming to Tkachuk, who knifed it past Quick for his ninth goal of the campaign. Tkachuk has been no stranger to the doorstep, having tipped more pucks than any player in the NHL this year.
Ottawa nearly struck again when a puck played by Quick was intercepted by Motte, but Quick made a save several feet in front of the blue paint to quiet the storm. That was part of a night where Quick and the power play sustained the Kings while their even-strength play fluctuated.
Notes: Winger Gabe Vilardi missed Sunday’s game with an upper-body injury and was replaced by Lias Andersson, who was sent to the minors Saturday but recalled Sunday to make his season debut … Defenseman Frederic Allard was also recalled in favor of Jacob Moverare, who was involved in a fight during a minor-league game Saturday … Defenseman Brandt Clarke finished his conditioning assignment and was also recalled, though neither he nor Allard dressed Sunday.
