PRESEASON FINAL – Kings 2, Utah Hockey Club 3 (OT) – Malott, Edmundson, Turcotte, Hiller

In their first game of the preseason on Monday night, the LA Kings scored twice in the second period to erase an early deficit, but ultimately gave up an overtime goal to Clayton Keller and fell to the Utah Hockey Club 3-2.

Jeff Malott and Alex Turcotte scored for the Kings in the middle frame, while Caleb Jones, Francesco Pinelli and Jacob Moverare all recorded assists in the game. Erik Portillo poured in 14 of the 16 shots he saw on net in the first 40 minutes before Carter George made his NHL preseason debut, stopping six of the seven attempts thrown his way in 20:19 of action.

The Kings started as expected on the road in front of a crowd looking for reasons to cheer, placing six of the first eight shots of the game on Utah’s net but unable to avoid goalie Connor Ingram early on.

Utah broke through first, scoring twice on consecutive power-play goals less than two minutes apart. Lawson Crouse found the net first, converting a pass from former Kings defenseman Sean Durzi at 15:04, before Alex Kerfoot fired a rebound past goalie Erik Portillo just 1:42 later at 16:46 of the first.

Moments after Crouse’s first goal, the physicality of the game was taken to a new level with two battles on consecutive faceoffs. First, Malott dropped the gloves with Liam O’Brien before Jack Studnicka, who had been involved in a collision with Ingram in the Utah net earlier in the period, took on Travis Barron.

Malott put the Kings on the board with the team’s first goal of the preseason at 6:17 of the second period, scoring on the rebound of a shot from the right by Jones. The blast set up a second chance that Malott, playing his first game in a Kings jersey, quickly cleared into the net to make it 2-1.

Six minutes later, Turcotte tied the score on a 5-on-3 power play at 13:42 of the middle frame. Turcotte took advantage of a pass from the right-wing wall by Pinelli and moved the puck to his backhand before sliding it past Ingram.

LA tied the score in the second half by finishing off consecutive penalties by Trevor Lewis and Brandt Clarke to end the 2:16-minute period.

The third game was without penalties and both teams opted for a more defensive game with a 9-6 advantage in shots, especially in favor of the Kings. Also good chances for teammates Andre Lee and Samuel Helenius were the highlight.

Keller’s game-winning goal came just 19 seconds into overtime to give Utah the win in their first-ever pre-season home game.

Listen below to reactions to the outcome from Malott and Turcotte, as well as defender Joel Edmundson and head coach Jim Hiller –

Jeff Malott
On what it felt like to make an impact with a goal and a fight in his first game in a Kings uniform
Yeah, it was fun. I just wanted to keep an eye on all the systems and contribute where I could and yeah, I think it was a good start.

About the atmosphere during the very first practice match in Utah
It was great. It’s obvious they’re excited about a new organization here and everyone comes to support, of course. So it’s fun to play for.

About his teammates and playing in the entire lineup
It was fun playing with a lot of different guys tonight. Everybody’s excited, everybody moves fast, everybody wants to compete hard and make plays and yeah, it was fun to build some chemistry with a bunch of different guys here.

Joel Edmundson
On playing his first game in a Kings jersey
Oh, it’s awesome. Yeah, I think there’s a couple of us who were doing it for the first time. So we were really excited to start the game, it was a pretty cool moment.

On what it was like to play in front of an energetic crowd
Yeah, we expected that. Obviously it always seemed like it was a sellout when it was a team’s first game, so they brought the energy tonight and I think there were a couple of moments where we got the crowd quiet and we had momentum. But overall it was a great experience.

About playing with Brandt Clarke in a game situation
I mean, you can do whatever you want in practice, but once you get into the game, it’s a different story. You know, guys forecheck hard, but I thought he did a great job tonight, very vocal on the ice, which helps me, and I tried to do the same for him, so he was solid.

Alex Turcotte
About a good start and playing well with teammates Trevor Lewis and Akil Thomas
It was great. Obviously I played a game with Akil last year in Ontario and I love playing with him. Same with Lewy, I love playing with him too and I had a lot of reps with him when I was in the running last year. So it was nice to play a real game and something different than the practice games, to get some touches. I think we played really well and we’re going to keep getting better.

About what he saw when he scored, receiving a pass from Pinelli
It was a great pass. He looked up the middle and he had the D-man bite and he tricked him and left me wide open. And you know, I screamed for it and just made a good move, a good play, and thankfully it went in.

About Erik Portillo’s game in the net
Ports was great today. He saved us a lot there, especially when we had a lot of penalty kills and he played great for us and was in it for us. I thought we had a lot of momentum early on and with those PKs he stepped up and made some big saves for us.

Jim Hiller
His general thoughts about his team’s play in the match
I really liked the five-on-five game. They had their best guys in the game, their power play was moving well, so they did some damage there. But at five-on-five, I really liked our game and a lot of young guys throughout the lineup were playing and doing well.

On Malott and Studnicka’s performance and physique in their debut
Well, the first thing you notice, and I know there’s not much left to fight for in hockey. The first thing you notice are two guys who are new to our organization, and they drop the gloves. That jumps out at you right away. So you get a check mark for that right away. And I thought, Melott finally scores, Studnicka had two or three more chances after that, so not that I want to criticize and rank everybody, but those two players impressed me.

About what the systems looked like that were worked on during the training camp
The obvious one is the neutral zone, and I thought it got better as the game went on. I really liked our neutral zone in the third period. We executed it pretty well. We liked that. We liked some of our breakouts, the rest of the stuff was hard work and they have a pretty good lineup there, so you have to adjust to the speed of top-tier NHL players and our guys did that. But the two areas, I would say, are the neutral zone and the breakouts from the neutral zone.

On how the physical aspects of training camp translated into match action
Oh, I thought it went over right away. I mean, I thought we were on their tail, forechecked them early, probably our best. Then there’s a couple of battles. So that seemed to go over right away, and there was good intensity right up until the end.

On the importance of scoring in 5-on-3
It was really important and I thought part of it was Turcotte winning that face-off on that keeper on the right. That was the beginning. He’ll get a reward eventually. But it was a big face-off. Probably the most important part of it.

The Kings resume practice Wednesday morning, then travel to Las Vegas to take on the Golden Knights later that evening at 7 p.m. at T-Mobile Arena.