Highilights
Post Game:
NHL.com Recap:
OTTAWA — Mike Hoffman had two goals and an assist to help the Ottawa Senators defeat the Los Angeles Kings 5-3 at Canadian Tire Centre on Monday.
The regulation loss ended the Kings’ streak of nine games with at least a point (7-0-2).
Mika Zibanejad had a goal and two assists, and Kyle Turris and Erik Karlsson each scored a goal for the Senators (16-10-5), who had lost two straight and were coming off a 3-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday.
Jamie McBain, Tyler Toffoli and Jake Muzzin scored for the Kings (19-9-2), and goalie Jonathan Quick made 16 saves.
The Senators were outshot 42-26 by the Canadiens on Saturday, including 27-8 in the first period, and concluded their four-game road trip at 1-3-0.
“The nice thing about playing 82 games is you don’t have much time to think about the last performance,” said goalie Craig Anderson, who made 33 saves in his 15th straight start. “For us, coming home, it’s a good spot to have a refresh, recharge, kind of hit the reset button from that road trip.
“We’re all proud people. We get embarrassed. We don’t get to this level by not being proud of what we do and what we can accomplish. I think that drives a lot of guys to be proud of what we’ve done and continue to strive for.”
Coach Dave Cameron said the Senators lacked pride against the Canadiens, but he praised his players for bouncing back against the Kings.
“It’s the way I expect that team to play,” he said. “You’re excited that it’s a bounce-back game and you’re excited they come back and responded against a real good team. It stokes a fire a little bit when you see how bad they were the other night, but you put that away.”
The Senators jumped on the Kings early in the second period and took a 4-1 lead with three goals in 3:34.
The Kings came back with goals by Toffoli, late in the second period, and Muzzin to make it 4-3 with 10 minutes left in the third period, but Zibanejad knocked in a rebound of a shot by Bobby Ryan at 12:11 to make it 5-3.
“Four out of the five goals, if not all of them, came from our mistakes, and you just can’t do that,” Kings center Anze Kopitar said. “You can’t trade chances like that, not against a team like that where they have so many forwards with a lot of skill. It hurt us tonight.”
The Kings are 2-1-1 on a six-game Eastern Conference road trip. With a couple days off before they play the Canadiens on Thursday, they’ll spend the next two days at a ski resort near Montreal.
“Probably the craziness of Montreal is not the best thing for two or three straight days,” Kopitar said. “To get away from that just a little bit, I think it is going to freshen up our minds.”
Coach Darryl Sutter said the break will help the Kings, who played three games in four nights.
“We looked like a tired team,” he said. “It caught up with us a little bit. That’s the highest-scoring team we’ve played this year. We made some fatigue mistakes, and they buried them.”
Los Angeles defenseman Jamie McBain scored the only goal of the first period. The Kings took advantage of a poor line change by the Senators, and McBain skated down the right wing and beat Anderson to the stick side at 14:21.
The Senators stormed the Kings net to start the second, and they tied it when Los Angeles defenseman Brayden McNabb fell along the left-wing boards in his zone and lost the puck to Zibanejad below the goal line. Zibanejad passed to Hoffman, unguarded in front, and he scored at 2:29.
Senators forward Mark Stone had an assist on the goal for his 100th point in the NHL.
Turris scored his 13th goal when he took a pass at the top of the slot from Karlsson and scored on a rising shot at 3:58. Karlsson made it 3-1 at 6:03 with Ryan providing a screen in front.
Hoffman scored his second goal of the game and 17th of the season to make it 4-1 at 14:34 when he worked a fine give-and-go with Curtis Lazar.
The Kings got a lucky bounce and some life when Toffoli scored into an empty net on the power play to cut the Senators lead to two. With Anderson behind the net to play a puck off the glass, it caromed away from him, and Toffoli took advantage with 2:23 left in the second period.
“We had faith in here. Go out and win the first 10, try to win the second 10,” said Muzzin, who scored his fourth goal midway through the third period to pull Los Angeles to within 4-3. “We actually score right on the 10-minute mark. We tried to push for the second one, and they got one late and that kind of hurt us a little bit.”
With Quick out of the net for the extra attacker, Hoffman had a chance at the Kings blue line for the hat trick with 55 seconds to go, but Los Angeles defenseman Drew Doughty slashed him.
“I don’t blame them,” Hoffman said. “I probably would have slashed the guy too instead of taking a minus … take two minutes in the box.”
Kings coach Darryl Sutter used seven defensemen against the Senators. He took center Jordan Weal out of the lineup and inserted defenseman Derek Forbort.
Sutter said he opted to use seven defensemen because he wasn’t happy with the production from the bottom half of his forward lineup.