ANAHEIM — The, um, road warriors kept up their pace on Friday afternoon. Then again, as the Kings ran their road winning streak to nine games with a 5-2 victory over the Ducks in the semi-hostile environs of Orange County, it has to be asked:
Does it really, really count as a road game when at least half the crowd is chanting, “Go Kings Go?”
“Yeah, not much at all,” Kings forward Quinton Byfield said with a chuckle. “You know, it’s really exciting, actually. Today. I mean, you’re coming out for warmups, they’re kind of chanting for us as well. There’s a little bit of an aggressive game, too, and the crowd had something to do with that. You know, they’re behind it also.
“It was a lot of fun. Love, you know, great, awesome Kings fans here, like always, every time we play here. So it was very exciting.”
The road was arduous in another way. Kevin Fiala noted that the bus bound for Honda Center left El Segundo at 9:30 in the morning.
“It was a very good job of everybody to be professionals,” Fiala said. “They didn’t eat too much turkey, I guess, yesterday. And we were ready from the start.”
Any residual effects of tryptophan were gone by game time. Fiala scored twice, the first goal of the game on a power play with a shot from a sharp angle off John Gibson’s shoulder, and a second-period drive-by when he skated in front of the net and put one past Gibson to the stick side.
The Kings did what a good road team does: Two power-play goals in the first 12½ minutes from Fiala and Arthur Kaliyev, and two more back-to-back from Byfield and Fiala in the first 2:56 of the second period, forcing Ducks coach Greg Cronin to use his timeout to settle his young guys down.
“You could see they’re getting down,” Cronin said. “There’s a lot of young kids, and you look at the scoreboard and, you know, the shot differential wasn’t that great. But they don’t (notice that). They look at the score. And I thought we were playing okay. There was energy, there was scoring chances going back both ways. And I just didn’t want them to press and to get down and then you can get a little bit of that complacency creeps in.
“I just wanted to make sure that we were playing the right way. It doesn’t matter if it’s 22 minutes into the game or it’s 42 minutes into the game, always playing the right way. That was the message.”
These are obviously teams at different stages of the development spectrum. The Ducks, with their emphasis on youth and building a sustainable contender, have receded some after their six-game winning streak from a couple of weeks ago, and Friday’s was their seventh loss in the past nine games and fifth in a row.
The Kings are a veteran group looking to take the next step – or steps – after first-round playoff eliminations against Edmonton each of the last two years, and now are 12-3-3 and have won four in a row, with another test Saturday afternoon at home against Montréal.
“I said the other day we’re a mature team,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “Not always in age, but mature (in) being around each other and playing with each other and understanding how we want to play. And we work hard to get the lead and then we do our thing.”
Cronin was asked where he felt the Kings were in comparison to the NHL’s other high-powered clubs. After saying he didn’t intend to put any pressure on his SoCal rivals, he said they’re a “Stanley Cup contending team.” And here’s one small but significant reason why.
“On their forechecks they get on top of people, and they’re really good at wall battles,” Cronin said. “They’re probably the best team, for me, in breaking pucks out when the puck’s on the wall, which is a hard play to make, especially (with) pressure from top down. And they get people in positions that it’s predictable. They know where people are. They shovel pucks into spaces with speed, so they’re able to come out with a lot of speed. And then once they’re in the offensive zone, you watch them. They really shield the puck well, they protect it well. They make good plays with the puck. The (defensemen) get involved real maturely. They’re a handful.”
Another aspect of that experience was evident midway through the second period when a rash of penalties following a scrum had both Drew Doughty and Mikey Anderson in the penalty box, with both Trevor Moore and Adrian Kempe dropping back to play on the blue line during the penalty kill.
“It goes to show that the players that have been here for a while understand what we’re trying to do because the pieces are interchangeable,” McLellan said. “Rarely does a forward have to fill in. But in Trevor Moore’s or Juice’s (Kempe’s) situation, they’ve been around long enough. They knew what they needed to do and what their responsibilities were, and they both skate real well, both responsible. It makes sense that those two would be the ones to go back there.”
Maybe the Kings’ streak away from downtown L.A. can be considered part of that process. In fact, after Friday’s victory only two teams in NHL history have had better starts to a season on the road. The 2009-10 New Jersey Devils won nine straight, and the 2006-07 Buffalo Sabres won 10 straight before losing.
The trick, McLellan noted, is to establish your game quickly in the other guys’ rink. His team accomplished that by the third minute Friday afternoon.