The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Gavrikov’s overtime goal lifts Kings to victory over Lightning
LOS ANGELES >> On a night where the NHL’S leading scorer was in town and two of the 10 active 1000-point players were in action, it was two stay-at-home defensemen that pushed the Kings past the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Kings closed out their homestand 3-for-3 and beat an opponent with a points streak of five games or more for the third time this month as they bested the Lightning, 4-3 in overtime, late on Saturday night at Crypto.com Arena.
They’ve posted a 9-2-1 record at home under interim coach Jim Hiller, after going 8-9-6 under his predecessor Todd Mclellan. They stayed two points ahead of fourthplace Vegas, who beat Columbus on Saturday.
Vladislav Gavrikov gained steam trailing the play and received a pass from Adrian Kempe that sent him toward the net at full speed for the game-winning goal, his sixth of the campaign, a mere 25 seconds into the extra session. The Kings’ third goal belonged to Mikey Anderson, and it doubled his total for the season.
“Those players do so much of the dirty work, we’ll call it heavy lifting: blocking shots, staying back, defending, cross-checking and doing all that kind of stuff,” Hiller said. “When the players see one of those guys, and tonight both of them scored, they get extra excited for those guys.”
Kempe and Trevor Moore each scored as well. Cam
Talbot turned away 22 shots. The Kings won their third straight game, and on the 30th anniversary of Wayne Gretzky surpassing Gordie Howe’s record for career NHL goals in a 6-3 loss to Vancouver at the Great Western Forum.
Steven Stamkos scored on the power play and then sixon-five to rally from a 3-1 disadvantage and force overtime. Stamkos will likely join Anze Kopitar in the 1,200-point club next season, and his dramatic 6-on-5 tally was engineered by Art Ross Trophy frontrunner Nikita Kucherov. Brayden Point scored a power-play goal and assisted on Stamkos’ man-advantage marker. Andrei Vasilevskiy cast aside 19 of 23 bids he faced from the Kings.
The Kings entered the third period with a onegoal lead and a 27-0-3 mark in games where they had an edge at the second intermission. They would prevail again, and against one of the three teams that beat them in overtime after a thirdperiod rally (on Jan. 9 in Tampa Bay), but not without considerable suspense.
Tampa Bay created intrigue and then gave the fans on hand the not-so-welcome gift of bonus hockey behind the efforts of their captain Stamkos.
Moments after he struck both the crossbar and post with a shot, Stamkos tied the game with a one-timer from the left dot with 46 seconds to play.
The Lightning had halved their deficit when Stamkos fired in a diving one-timer from inside the left circle with 4:35 remaining in regulation. The Lightning’s second power-play goal marked the first time since Dec. 10 that the Kings had surrendered multiple man-advantage markers in a game.
“All they need is basically one second, a seam (pass to) a one-timer. We’ve seen that goal over and over again with those players,” Hiller said. “We did a good job on the PK ... they just executed when they had a chance and they buried it.”