***LA Kings @ Nashville Predators GDT 10/18/22 6:30pm on >>ESPN<<***

Is Villardi a star or what? Wow, this is like a brand new Gabe we're seeing this season. What happened in the summer?
 
Vilardi and QB are clicking real good. Both have really made a big improvement over the summer. This is great for the Kings because they have to make their high picks count. TM needs to have more trust in the youngsters. They are the teams future.
 
DarkLeftThoughts?

Matt Roy, your lord and savior. Oh, how fickle the whimsy of fate, with his gaffs in the first couple games, and now the third period hero this evening.

Fiala looks lackadaisical and complacent. Where is the guy that looked so crafty and energized in the preseason?

Kopitar needs to sit out power plays, and perhaps try a little harder on those OT face offs, which are of unparalleled importance.

Danault and Moore had the game on their sticks several times in the latter half of the game, and could not bear down. Furthermore, watching Danault and Kaliyev both flub those cross ice one timers in the latter stages of the game truly makes one appreciate the magical talent that guys like Ovechkin and Stamkos possess. I can?t recall the last time the Kings had a player who could one time a puck worth a ****. Not one player in the brown/kopi/Doughty era. I thought Kaliyev would be that guy, but I?ve lost confidence in his ability to take those passes from outside his wheelhouse and hammer them. He can?t even hammer the ones in his wheelhouse. Disconcerting.

The holding penalties called tonight are absolutely baffling, particular the early one on Clarke and the call against Walker. Nothing there at all, and I?m not sure how Fiala gets mugged in OT, and then Doughty gets a call against on the opposite end of the ice just seconds later. All in all, this season has started out with WAY too many penalty calls, on all accounts. I cannot stand watching these disjointed games with non stop special teams action. Atrocious.
 
Say what you will about Cal, but I would play him 100x in a shootout before playing Jonathan once.
Quick going to a shootout - post the Cup years = guaranteed Kings loss.
 
Say what you will about Cal, but I would play him 100x in a shootout before playing Jonathan once.
Quick going to a shootout - post the Cup years = guaranteed Kings loss.

Shootouts have never seemed to be Quick's thing, yet he's no slouch. He's 49 W / 42 L lifetime in shootouts. Could it be that quite a few of those losses were due to having a low talent team, in terms of shootout talent, in front of him for much of his career?
 
Awesome comeback to force OT. After a so-so game Cal made some huge saves in OT, then a shootout shutout. Hopefully, he gains some confidence from this.

Roy, 3 goals in 2 games, wowzer.
 
Hopefully OT Cal can show up for his next start! I only got to listen on radio to some of the first, and then about the last 5 of the 3rd and into OT/SO....Sounded like the OT was super-extra-exciting! Nick Nickson about blew a gasket towards the end of it.


Great 4 points on the roadie so far!!
 
Did it seem like watching the ESPN broadcast was almost like watching a Preds broadcast? Maybe it was just me. Oh well, who cares. We got the win.
And what a huge win it was. It may not have pretty, there were a lot of mistakes. But they came through. That's true for the team overall & for Cal specifically. 2 of the goals he allowed weren't great. But at the end of the 3rd, through OT, & the shootout he really stepped up. We need that from him. Also, Gabe Freaking Vilardi, getting that great tip in on that 1st goal & then scoring the shootout winner. He's been amazing so far this season. And how about Matt Roy, the scoring machine? He's the 3rd leading goal scorer on the team with 3 goals. That's great for him. Not so much for Kopitar, Fiala, Danault, Moore, Arvidsson, or Doughty. Anyway, it's 3 straight wins on this road trip. This may not be a great team but it's a resilient team.

Go Kings Go!
 
Congratulations to the following posters who correctly guessed the final score would be recorded as 4-3:

Clif
Chateau Bow Wow
hornman
AngelEyes
KHenry14
Rusty
Helvetica
BustedChops
VegasHockey
John a90
RoS
Kurisu
randdog
Liz4LA
Sevenhole
LeftyKing

For a second game of a b2b I don't know how you focus too much on certain individual moments when there were great team elements involved in the comeback. The room is obviously playing for each other, coach what you can coach and take the points. Preds are a good test, they like everyone else in the league, have some stuff to clean up too. Biggest thing is to try and come out of these games without losing anyone else from the lineup.
 
Shootouts have never seemed to be Quick's thing, yet he's no slouch. He's 49 W / 42 L lifetime in shootouts. Could it be that quite a few of those losses were due to having a low talent team, in terms of shootout talent, in front of him for much of his career?

Maybe, but he also got Stoll's crazy 10 for 11 season as a shooter.
 
There have been many shootouts over the last several years where all Quick had to do was make that one last save to win a SO and he just couldn’t. I find it hard to believe any other team has more SO losses after leading in the SO.
 
Perhaps Blakey’s patience with Kempe, Vilardi and QB showed he has far greater hockey knowledge and intuition than many here are willing to admit. I also believe that sticking with Turcotte will produce great results in the not too distant future.
 
Perhaps Blakey’s patience with Kempe, Vilardi and QB showed he has far greater hockey knowledge and intuition than many here are willing to admit. I also believe that sticking with Turcotte will produce great results in the not too distant future.

Seriously, I stand corrected. I wanted to trade GV last year along with Turcotte. More proof to myself that I know nothing, as Vilardi has been our BEST all around offensive player this year. Sure glad I'm not a GM!
 
Wait, so that wasn't a local Nashville crew on ESPN last night? No disrespect to Nashville.

Just when you think it couldn't get any worse on ESPN. Where do they find these people?
 
Both Our Goalies are much better than they seem...

I know nothing about the technicalities of hockey, but I do think both goalies are a hell of a lot better than they're able to show right now. The defence seems to me to be all over the place and represent the main problem here, not the goalies themselves. With the skill levels and vision of top players and teams in general in the NHL, then obviously tighter, far better organized and disciplined defence is needed and if achieved will prove that our goalies are nowhere near as fallible as they currently appear to be. It seems to me that the way the defence is playing at the moment has the goalies really, really jumpy and when they're jumpy they're going to make all kinds of unnatural mistakes, especially reflexively, no matter what the shot or the circumstances. JQ and CP are by no means perfect, of course, but goalies must surely be heavily influenced by the confidence they gain, or lose, from the organisation, discipline and "protection" they are afforded. When it is as inconsistent or consistently undisciplined as ours is we are going to see the same inconsistency in our goalies. Part of my reasoning for this is that Cal was clearly better in the OT and shootout because he had fewer players to focus on (worry about), in both attack and defence, and could therefore better control his space and positioning. In being able to do this, whereas during the game he seemed flaky, in OT and shootout he confidently delivered. That's just the way I, in my ignorance, see it anyway.
 
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Seriously, I stand corrected. I wanted to trade GV last year along with Turcotte. More proof to myself that I know nothing, as Vilardi has been our BEST all around offensive player this year. Sure glad I'm not a GM!

Gabe lost almost 2 1/2 years to the congenital back problem. The talent, however, was always there. So happy for him that he is once again becoming the dominant player he was before his 18th birthday.

We have to give the same consideration to Turcotte. He has incredible skills and was adapting well to playing LW before the concussions. Turcotte been victimized by a string of terrible hockey luck. If he can come back, I would love to see a Turcotte-Byfield-Vilardi line in the not too distant future.
 
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