LOS ANGELES - Adrian Kempe wasted no time making up for lost ground, and Artemi Panarin kept feeding the fire.
The two Kings stars piled up eight points combined in a 7-2 win over the Sharks, with each player finishing with four points in Los Angeles’ highest-scoring game of the season.
Kempe, back after missing the previous game against the Sabres, looked sharp from the opening shift. He brought pace, found space and kept getting clean looks in the first period, when he scored the first two goals of the night. By the end of the game, he had a hat trick.
“Pucks just went in. Another game a lot of chances and tonight they went in earlier and then often,” said Kempe.
“Well catch up the fact for me but for the team and line as well. So yeah happy that I scored, obviously, and happy to get the monkey off my back a little bit.”
His night kept building in the second period. Kempe picked up an assist on Quinton Byfield’s first power-play goal, then later buried his third goal after a strong feed from Alex Laferriere.
Through two periods, Kempe had accounted for three of the Kings’ five goals, and Panarin was right in the middle of the playmaking that made it all happen. He assisted on two of Kempe’s goals, and he also set up both of Byfield’s power-play tallies.
Panarin finished with all four of his points coming via assists, and every Kings power-play goal came with his fingerprints on it. His passing turned Los Angeles’ attack into something much harder to contain.
The first line’s surge didn’t just fill the net. It set the tone for the rest of the roster.
“I thought the Kenny Connors line was good. They chipped in goals,” Coach Laviolette said. “They took a lot of head to head with Celebrini and his line and I thought they did a really good job.”
The other scoring outside the top line came from the fourth line, which added two goals of its own. Erik Haula scored and also picked up an assist on the Joel Armia goal.
Los Angeles played with a quicker pace and more urgency once the passing started clicking, and the bottom six followed that lead. But the night belonged to Kempe and Panarin, who drove the offense and pushed the Kings to their biggest scoring output of the season.
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For Los Angeles, the bigger takeaway was how quickly the attack found its rhythm with Kempe driving the night from the start. The Kings have been looking for that sort of finishing punch, and on a busy scoreboard night around the league, Kempes performance stood out as the kind of spark that can change the tone of a teams week. [Read more 🡒]