Losing 4-2 to the visiting Vancouver Canucks likely won’t be the lasting memory from Thursday night’s game at Crypto.com Arena. There are now pending roster issues coming out of the contest, with one LA player likely to be suspended and another potentially sidelined following a play in the second period. There was at least one positive in the game, though.
The Good: Starting with perhaps the one good thing to happen on the ice, Quinton Byfield scored a goal that coach Jim Hiller was impressed by — noting it was a difficult situation to convert on. When his young forward turned on the goal light less than two minutes after puck drop, many in the arena thought it could be a big night for the home team. Byfield had a bit of a slow start to his 2024-25 campaign, yet recorded his first goal of the season in Minnesota on Tuesday; so this gave him goals in consecutive games. Linemate Warren Foegele added, “They always say the first one is always the hardest, and for him, you could definitely tell he was gripping the stick pretty tight, so it’s really nice to see him get one last game. Today, you know, a little bit more relaxed and he finished on his chance. That’s the Q we know, works really hard, has high-end skill and logs a lot of minutes for this team. He’s an important piece for us.”
The Bad: Tanner Jeannot clipped Canucks forward Brock Boeser midway through the first period on a play that will likely result in a suspension (more on that later today). Because he was assigned a match penalty for the infraction, Akil Thomas ended up serving the major penalty for LA. This essentially left Hiller down two forwards early in the game. He seemed to shrug that aspect of the situation during his postgame presser, instead focusing on the big picture, “I don’t think we were completely fresh, or as fresh as we would have liked to be tonight, so that makes it a little harder.”
The Ugly: Any time there is blood on the ice, it’s not good. As the physicality of the game ramped up, though, it was actually a puck shot from the blueline that ended up causing the most damage to LA’s blueline. Mikey Anderson had to be helped off the ice after being struck and did not return for the third period. No real updates were available postgame, beyond Joel Edmundson seeming to indicate the bench received encouraging news on Anderson from the trainers. More is expected to be known following Friday’s optional team practice at 11am.
[ed note: Hiller press conference video to be added later]
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