Forward breaks tie in 3rd period for Pittsburgh; Los Angeles drops 3rd in row
Penguins at Kings | Recap
LOS ANGELES — Filip Hallander scored his first NHL goal for the Pittsburgh Penguins, who scored four unanswered goals in a 4-2 win against the Los Angeles Kings at Crypto.com Arena on Thursday.
Hallander gave the Penguins a 3-2 lead at 6:50 of the third period when he jammed in Rickard Rakell’s rebound at the left post for a short-handed goal. Rakell had hit the crossbar on a 2-on-1 rush and got the rebound on goal with a backhand shot before Hallander put it in.
“It’s really cool, especially (after) we weren’t really happy with our effort on the PK in the last game (4-3 loss at the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday). And to come up and get a big short-handed goal to win the game, the group’s really happy about that,” Pittsburgh forward Connor Dewar said.
PIT@LAK: Hallander records a SHG for the first goal of his career
Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby and Dewar also scored for the Penguins (3-2-0), and Arturs Silovs made 30 saves. Erik Karlsson and Parker Wotherspoon each had two assists.
“The guys were going over the boards, they went over with something to prove,” Pittsburgh coach Dan Muse said. “They weren’t happy about the way it went there the other night. They get a new opportunity tonight, and that’s the great thing about this league. If you’re not happy with the results from a night or two ago, you get a new opportunity right around the corner, and I think for the team and for the special teams, they responded really well.”
Warren Foegele and Kevin Fiala scored for the Kings (1-3-1), who have lost three straight (0-2-1). Anton Forsberg made 22 saves, and captain Anze Kopitar did not play because of a lower-body injury.
“We’ve shown that we can have really good periods, and then for whatever reason it just gets away from us,” Los Angeles forward Trevor Moore said. “We just got to put it all together, and we will. It’s still early in the year, can’t panic yet, but we’ll be fine.”
Foegele got his first goal of the season to put the Kings up 1-0 at 4:24 of the first period. He followed up his own rebound with a wrist shot down on one knee from the inside edge of the right circle.
Fiala made it 2-0 at 9:04, finishing off a tic-tac-toe passing play between Quinton Byfield and Joel Armia. After Armia forced a turnover in the Kings zone, he connected on the far side with Byfield, who then sent a centering pass to the front of the net that Fiala tapped in.
“It was a really nice goal, and probably the key part of that goal was Armia,” Los Angeles coach Jim Hiller said. “As he came to the blue line, he pulled the puck in and just delayed enough, allowed himself to create a little space and time to get the puck over to Byfield, who made a great pass, of course, to Kevin at the back post.”
PIT@LAK: Fiala, Byfield, Armia combine for a nifty goal
After falling behind, the Penguins responded with two goals in 41 seconds in the second period to even the score.
Malkin scored on the power play at 6:37 by putting a wrist shot from the left circle under Forsberg’s glove to cut Pittsburgh’s deficit to 2-1.
“We haven’t won the special teams battle yet this season,” Hiller said. “That’s an important part of any hockey game is the special teams battle. Hard to win if you don’t win the special teams battle, so that’s the one (area that was most disappointing).”
Dewar tied it 2-2 at 7:18, sneaking a shot under the right pad of Forsberg after Noel Acciari chased down a loose puck in transition.
“They came out really fast, they got those two early, but we were able to stay with it and kind of weather the storm and then got our game going in the second period,” Dewar said.
Crosby, who scored an empty-net goal at 19:29 for the 4-2 final, and Kris Letang skated in their 1,000th game together, becoming the seventh forward-defenseman duo in NHL history to reach the milestone.
NOTES: Hiller said there could be an update on Kopitar’s injury as soon as Friday morning. “We’re still kind of evaluating where it’s at,” he said. … The other six forward-defenseman combinations to play in 1,000 games together are Kopitar and Drew Doughty (1,191), Kris Draper and Nicklas Lidstrom (1,107), Bob Gainey and Larry Robinson (1,062), George Armstrong and Tim Horton (1,044), Alex Ovechkin and John Carlson (1,038), and Mark Messier and Kevin Lowe (1,008). … Crosby and Malkin played in their 1,070th regular-season game together, surpassing Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith (1,069) for the sixth-most by a pair of teammates in NHL history.
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