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The Los Angeles Kings dropped their second game of the season tonight, losing 4-1 to the Seattle Kraken.
Brandt Clarke came into the lineup in place of Sean Durzi, playing with Alex Edler. After what was a pretty rough defensive performance for Durzi in the season opener on Tuesday, seeing Clarke draw in for Durzi wasn’t a huge shock.
Up front, Viktor Arvidsson was out with an illness, so Carl Grundstrom jumped up to play with Trevor Moore and Phillip Danault on the second line, while Brendan Lemieux came into the lineup to play with Blake Lizotte and Arthur Kaliyev on the fourth line. Jonathan Quick was back in net.
The Kings started the game with two early penalties and while they were able to kill off the first, Jaden Schwartz buried a rebound late in the second power play to open the scoring for Seattle. Los Angeles had a power play of their own only a few minutes later though and right off the faceoff, Alex Iafallo intercepted a pass behind the net and beat Martin Jones with a wraparound before he could even react, tying the game. The rest of the frame was pretty quiet, with neither team generating many chances – it did look like Seattle may have taken the lead in the dying seconds of the frame, but the goal was waved off for a high stick. While the Kings didn’t generate a ton of chances, they also did a solid job defensively, limiting the Kraken to only four even strength shots in the period.
While Los Angeles continued to limit chances in the second period, Brandon Tanev was able to drive to the net and get the puck over Quick, to give Seattle the lead again. Then as the period went on, the Kraken capitalized just as a power play expired, with Alex Wennberg sliding a puck through Quick to extend the lead. The Kings had a couple chances on a power play later but couldn’t convert and it remained a 3-1 Seattle lead through 40 minutes.
Not much changed in the final frame, as the Kings just couldn’t get anything going offensively. They ended up with 10 shots in the third period but of those, few could be considered high-danger. Even with a 6-on-4 late in the game with a penalty to Seattle and the goalie pulled, Los Angeles couldn’t convert and Adam Larsson iced the game with an empty net goal.
While both teams took a lot of penalties, the Kings ended up going just 1-for-5 on the power play, but killed off five of six penalties as well.
The Kings didn’t get a whole lot going at any point though and it rarely seemed like they were able to build momentum. While Los Angeles did a much better job defensively compared to the season opener against Vegas (giving up just 22 shots, compared to 51 shots in the opener), they couldn’t get any offense going the other way.
If there was a positive, Brandt Clarke looked really good in his regular season debut. He was carrying the puck and comfortable controlling it in all areas of the ice, and didn’t seem out of place at all.
It’s certainly a tough way for the Kings to start the year, losing two home games against divisional opponents. Worse than that may be the fact that the Kings haven’t played with much urgency and have been flat for most of the first two games as well.
Their next game comes on Saturday against the Minnesota Wild, which begins a stretch of five road games in eight days.
OTHER ARTICLES FROM OCTOBER
Kings announce opening night roster
Late goal sinks Kings in opening night loss to Golden Knights 
Los Angeles Kings Blogger • 
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