Cal Petersen, Kings snap Golden Knights’ win streak

As they were sinking in the standings, the Kings responded resoundingly with an elusive win over the West’s top team, toppling the Vegas Golden Knights 3-1 at Staples Center Sunday.

The Kings entered the game in sixth place, trailing fourth-place St. Louis by seven points for the final playoff spot. They leapfrogged the Arizona Coyotes with Sunday’s win, and by beating Vegas for the first time in four games the Kings have now won at least one game against each divisional foe this season.

Winger Dustin Brown scored his team-leading fourteenth goal, which was also his team-leading power-play goal No. 8. Defenseman Sean Walker became the third Kings defenseman to tally this season and forward Jeff Carter scored a breakaway goal. Cal Petersen made 41 of 42 saves, turning in a magnificent performance in the third period.

Center Tomas Nosek tallied for Vegas. Marc-Andre Fleury, arguably the West’s top goalie this season, stopped 28 of 31 shots.

With 2:32 to play, Carter clinched the victory after winger Andreas Athanasiou freed him for a breakaway with some deft touch on a lead pass. Carter deked from forehand to backhand, opening up Fleury for a five-hole goal.

Vegas had cut the Kings’ lead to a single goal with 3:27 remaining in the game. Nosek drove wide on the left side, lifting a shot that hit Petersen’s mask and then landed behind him and past the goal line.

The third period belonged to Vegas territorially but Petersen saved his best goaltending for the grand finale. After making 18 saves through two stanzas, Petersen stopped 22 shots in the third period as Vegas permeated the Kings’ zone at a level unseen in the first 40 minutes.

Vegas began adding intrigue to the third period by drawing a tripping penalty on Carter just over two minutes into the frame. The officials awarded them a goal on a play where defenseman Drew Doughty stood in the goalcrease and blocked a shot attempt.

Though the goal was disallowed after an official review, Doughty was assessed a delay of game penalty for knocking the net off its moorings. The Kings proceeded to kill both penalties, including over a minute of five-on-three time, and preserved their two-goal lead.

In the second period, the Kings took their first penalty of the night. But instead of letting Vegas back into the game, it was the penalty kill unit generating a sterling chance when center Blake Lizotte nearly fired a shorthanded goal past Fleury.

A hair before the seven-minute mark of the period, the Kings took command with the second of two rapid-fire tallies.

They cashed in a power play that resulted from a failed coach’s challenge by Peter DeBoer on the Kings’ first goal.

Brown set up shop at the right side of the net. Center Anze Kopitar moved the puck to the left faceoff circle for winger Alex Iafallo, who made a heady play on a shot-pass. Disguising his dish as a shot, he drew Vegas’s defenders away from Brown before dropping the puck to him for the hockey equivalent of an uncontested slam dunk 6:49 into the period.

Fifty-one seconds earlier, the Kings opened the scoring with Walker’s first goal of the year. Initially, center Gabe Vilardi shot from the left point into a pile of bodies, then Walker followed up with a shot attempt flipping the puck skyward toward the goal, and finally slipped it along the ice off his backhand and in. In the fracass, Vegas alleged, Kopitar interfered with Fleury. But the goal was upheld on video review, affording the Kings a man-advantage opportunity.

Early in the second stanza, forward Austin Wagner took exception to a hit by Vegas winger Keegan Kolesar, and the two fought. Wagner took the worse end of the tilt, but was giving up more than 30 pounds to the rugged Kolesar.

Kolesar did not play in Friday’s game, but drew back in for left winger Max Pacioretty, who sustained a lower-body injury. Pacioretty scored six points in the three previous meetings with the Kings, including a pair of goals Friday.

In the first period, prominent measures of possession–Corsi-for, Fenwick-for, and scoring chances-for percentages–were evenly split. The Kings line of Jaret Anderson-Dolan, Carl Grundstrom and Trevor Moore had a series of shot attempts at even strength, and Moore drew a penalty that led to the scoreless period’s only power play.

The Kings went back to the more conventional arrangement of six defensemen and 12 forwards after dressing seven defenders in their last game. Ironically, they went down a defenseman in the first period when Olli Maatta exited the game with an injury.

In the broader view, the Kings solidified at least one aspect of their defense corps Sunday. They announced that right-handed rearguard Matt Roy, one of their steadiest players on the back end in recent years, signed a contract extension. Roy, who led the Kings in plus-minus rating last season, will earn an average annual salary of $3.15 million over the next three campaigns.

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