Kings extend points streak to 8 games but fall to Penguins in OT – Press Enterprise

LOS ANGELES — The Kings’ recipe for success this season had been simple: hit the road and shove Cam Talbot between the pipes.

Thursday night, they started a four-game stretch at Crypto.com Arena and went to backup Pheonix Copley after Talbot made five straight starts since relieving Copley in Arizona on Oct. 27, but veering from the script proved problematic as they fell to the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-3, in overtime.

Carl Grundstrom, Adrian Kempe and Kevin Fiala scored for the Kings, who extended their points streak to eight consecutive games (6-0-2) but saw their four-game winning streak come to an end. Copley stopped 16 of 20 shots, in step with his sub-.800 save percentage this season.

Sidney Crosby spearheaded Pittsburgh’s attack with a goal and an assist on Jake Guentzel’s marker. Lars Eller also scored a goal before Bryan Rust deposited the OT winner. Magnus Hellberg stopped 34 shots in his first full game of the season.

In fact, sixty minutes proved insufficient and the match moved to overtime despite the Kings nearly doubling up the Penguins in shots on goal. The Kings initially averted sudden death when Rust had a goal disallowed after he was determined to have entered the offensive zone offside. That simply postponed the firing squad, as Rust scored on a wraparound with 1:15 to go in the extra session, a stuff attempt Kings coach Todd McLellan said he was sure Copley would “like to have back.”

“I’ve never seen two OT winners in one game. It was great, he stuck with it, and it was really telling for our team today, that we never quit, and if it didn’t work out on one shift, we went out and tried it again on the next one,” Eller said. “Credit to him, he made some great plays, on both goals.”

To reach the extra frame, with 13:20 remaining in regulation time, the Kings had drawn even off a tenacious play that saw four players crash the net, three hit it with shots in a three-second span and Fiala score his second goal of the season with the final followup bid.

A mere 37 seconds into the third period, the Kings found themselves chasing the game again. Though the Kings had three men back against Pittsburgh’s three attackers, Crosby managed to thread a pass across at least four bodies that found Guentzel’s blade for a tip-in and a 3-2 lead.

With just under two minutes left in the second period, the Penguins set up a feverish final 20 with a short-handed tying tally. Eller stripped Fiala and blasted off in transition. He danced across the slot, beating Fiala and Drew Doughty, and lifted a shot over Copley to knot the score. The previously struggling Penguins went 3-0-0 in California, having already beaten the Ducks and San Jose Sharks.

“We definitely needed it. We needed to get a little bit of wind in our sails,” Eller said. “Today, we didn’t play our best, we were on our heels a little bit, but we had some games where it was the same in our favor and somehow we came out on the wrong side, I guess it evened out a bit today, but we fought for it.”

Kempe gave the Kings their first edge of the night with a goal-scorer’s goal off a wrist shot high to the short side from the left faceoff dot. Kempe’s sixth goal extended his scoring streak to eight games over which he has compiled 12 points. Quinton Byfield extended his own string to five games (eight points) with a secondary assist, while Mikey Anderson’s wizardry on the zone entry was performed against four Pittsburgh defenders. Anderson’s eighth point of the season put him on track to incinerate his career high of 20 last year.

The Kings made it a fresh game with one second remaining on the game’s first penalty. Anze Kopitar skated down a dump-in and drew Erik Karlsson to him just as he dished the puck to a wide-open Grundstrom, who knifed the puck through Hellberg’s five hole for a short-handed redirection goal at 14:14.

There was a physical edge to the first period, with Kings defenseman Andreas Englund lighting up Radim Zohorna like a neon sign as he tried to cut toward the middle and Kempe delivering a gloved jab to the face of Evgeni Malkin during a scrum.

“He’s our shepherd, he kind of takes care of the group. He does it the right way, he’s very well-admired in the locker room and I think he’s gotten better, every night I think he’s gotten better,” McLellan said of Englund.

At the 7:11 mark of the first period, fittingly, Pittsburgh’s fortunes improved. A give-and-go play between Crosby and Kris Letang petered out but left Crosby with the puck at the side of the net, where his inventiveness turned a broken play into the game’s first goal. He played the puck to himself off one side of the net and then jammed home a backhanded wraparound on the other. The goal extended Crosby’s point streak to seven games and moved him into a tie with Mike Modano and the Kings’ own Luc Robitaille for the ninth most goals in NHL history with a single franchise (557).

Kopitar also accomplished the latest in a series of milestones, surpassing Robitaille for sole possession of second place on the Kings’ career points list (1,155) with an assist on Grundstrom’s goal.

“It seems to be happening every night. The sun comes up and it goes down, and Kopi sets a record and we move on,” McLellan said. “It should be recognized, acknowledging the type of career he’s had. But it’s happening over and over again, which is great for him.”

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