Kevin Fiala was back in the lineup, but the Los Angeles Kings still walked off the ice with the same old problem: another loss and a growing pile of frustration.
The Kings fell 5-2 to the New York Islanders on a night when Fiala returned after nine months away from injury. He did his part, picking up an assist and throwing his weight around physically, but his comeback couldn’t stop Los Angeles from sliding to its third straight defeat and dropping to 5-10-2 on the season.
For Fiala, the personal milestone was real. The result, though, was what mattered most.
“For me, just getting in the game, that’s very exciting. Very happy about that, obviously,” Fiala said. “But at the end of the day, it’s about [winning] games.”
The Kings actually generated most of the game’s scoring chances, but the Islanders were sharper when it counted. Los Angeles kept creating looks and still came away empty too often, while New York cashed in on its opportunities and made the most of the moments that swung the night.
Drew Doughty didn’t hide how draining that has become.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Kings defenseman and captain Drew Doughty said. “Tonight I thought we had a good effort. I thought we played some good hockey, but then there’s just, like, little moments in the game.”
Head coach Peter Laviolette pointed to a string of different breakdowns that led to the Islanders’ goals, with New York’s fifth coming into an empty net.
“There was four different reasons why they scored goals out there,” Laviolette added (the Islanders’ fifth goal was an empty-netter). “But for most of the game, the shots and the chances were on our lead.
There’d be something that we could have done better, and it’s in the back of our net. It’s a defensive zone coverage.
It’s a line change goal. It’s a power play goal.
It’s an off the rush goal. It’s just frustrating.”
Doughty said the problems aren’t about the Kings not understanding the system. In his view, it’s the execution inside the game that keeps costing them.
“I think, the systems, we all know them by now,” he said. “We’re all doing them pretty well. It’s just one-on-one moments, and really, that’s what’s hurting us.”
That leaves Los Angeles in a familiar and uncomfortable spot, trying to figure out whether this season can still be salvaged or whether the gap is already too wide. Fiala believes the group is close, but not close enough yet.
“I think they killed our momentum a little bit with that fourth goal,” Fiala said. “In important moments, we have to show up, we have to play better, more desperate, better details and all that.
So overall, I think we’ve been playing good. But the small step, it’s not far away.”
Doughty, meanwhile, said the Kings are running out of time to sort it out, but he still sees enough in the room to believe a turnaround is possible.
“We’re wasting time right now,” he said. “Next game, it has to happen.
It starts with practice tomorrow. We have to have a good practice, work hard, figure out our stuff, and come in for that next game, win that, and then have one hell of a road trip.
But I believe that we have the guys in the room right now to do it.”
Laviolette’s assessment was blunt: the Kings do not have the kind of identity he wants from his team, and the inconsistency is dragging everything down.
“I think we’ve been far too inconsistent with our game. We’re not winning games,” he said.
“The identity, any identity that you want to instill in a team, you want it to be in a successful way, and so therefore, we’re not anywhere near where we need to be. We gotta continue to work at it and push at it.
Like I said, there’s good things that we did on the ice tonight, but we made enough mistakes to lose a hockey game, and right now that’s kind of the way it’s been. We’ve got to continue to work to clean it up, continue to try and find ways to create and score, [and] play better.”
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