KINGS OF THE LEFT COAST ?

The Toronto Maple Leafs moved on to phase two of their California “Dream” tour with a visit to the Staples Centre, the LA Kings home rink.  Coach Todd McLellan has his squad off to a 4 and 5 to start, after coming off 44 win/99 point season last year.  Their biggest challenge at this point would appear to be goaltending as they sport a sub .900 save percentage.

The Leafs are coming off a rather shabby overtime loss at the Shark Tank in San Jose on Thursday.  Apologies (BTW) for my missed report on that game.  As I drifted in and out of a lung infected coma, I saw a few positives, like Marner and Mathews scoring to erase a 3-1 deficit.

Tonight Coach Keefe threw his roster back in to another blender.  On D, Victor Mete’ came out and was replaced by Filp Kral the 6’2”, 23 year old, left shot rookie for his NHL debut.  He was added to pair with veteran Mark Giordano.  Up front, Denis Malik and Zach Ashton-Reese got to test the press box popcorn, replaced by Wayne Simmonds on a bottom 6 line with Cale Jarnkroc and Nicola Aube’-Kubel.  Nick Robertson moved down to a line with the steady David Kampf and Pierre Engvall.  Not surprisingly Alex Kerfoot took Nicky-Bobby’s spot on the left side with the 2^nd line and Michael Bunting got bumped back up with Michell Marner and Austin Mathews.

Tonight’s “feeling out” was rather dull and sloppy as both teams needed a wake up call.  John Tavares finally opened the scoring at 9:15 with his 4^th PPG.  This was a bit of a relief for Leafs Nation as they have been scored on first for the past 6 games.

In the second, a pair of Justin Holl penalties resulted in back-to-back goals for Kempe and Arvadsson in just 6 minutes to give the Kings the lead.  Los Angeles took that queue to turn on the jets and assert themselves against a lacklustre Leafs team.  Andre Kopitar then set up Gabriel Vilardi for his 7^th.  If it wasn’t for a late push by TML and 3 consecutive “hold ins” by Giordano at his point, Pierre Engvall wouldn’t have scored his first goal 9 games off a nice pass from behind the net by Kampf.  That closed the period down at 3-2 LA.

New addition Kevin Fiala got the only goal the Kings really needed at the 2:11 mark of the third period after a steal off Rasmus Sandin to pretty much salt it away for the LA Kings.

Hopper Notes:  The Toronto Maple Leafs dropped back to 4-4-1 after another rather feeble loss…not be a complete cynic, but they were at this exact same record this time last year…a lot of no shows wore Leaf jerseys tonight:, Jarnkrok, Sandin, Aube-Kubel, the entire first line etc, etc…if it wasn’t for Samsonov, this game could have been 5 or 6-2…kinda silly looking outfits for TML tonight (thanks Biebs), but I kinda dug the silver buckets on the Kings…the ongoing debate as to who the first NHL coach to be fired (Boudreau, Keefe or Dallas Eakins) could be over this time tomorrow…and to add fuel to the fire, Barry Trots has hinted he’d like to coach an original 6 club…the Rangers, Bruins, Canadiens and Red Wings seem to be set and didn’t Chicago just hire another new coach ?…hmmmmm….Cheers – please comment.