Game 43: Kings 6, Sharks 2

If the Minnesota game was a character game, and the Washington game was a statement game, what does one classify the Kings 6-2 drubbing of everyone's top-ranked team, the Sharks?

How about a confirmation game? It's now confirmed that the Kings will make every game a battle, no matter who the opponent. The Kings went up to San Jose and put an absolute beatdown on the top team in the Pacific.

Scoring the first six (6!) goals of the game, the Kings held on to beat the Sharks, 6-2. And by saying hold on, well, that's a little but of an overstatement. Put it to you this way: the Shark Tank started to empty out midway through the second period, when Ryan Smyth's third goal in three games put the Kings ahead 4-0.

On Jan. 1, I started doing a semi-daily video blog where I (what else) talk about the Kings, and I recently came across an idea of posing three questions about the teams' upcoming matchup. My first question about the Kings/Sharks game was Can Anze Kopitar finally break his eight-game goal scoring slump? The answer to that one is: absolutely. His goal in the first period showed his awareness on the ice, scoring on the rebound to put the Kings up 3-0.

My second question was can the Kings match the intensity of their first period against the Capitals. Again, the answer to that one is yes. With three answered goals on 11 shots, the Kings were able to jump on Sharks goaltender Evgeni Nabokov early, and was able to finally chase him after two periods. Keep in mind: Nabokov had only allowed two goals during the Sharks' 8-game winning streak. Monday, he gave up six.

The third question was could L.A. crack the Sharks' penalty kill unit. San Jose boasted the No. 2 penalty kill in the league heading into Monday night's matchup. In fact, the Sharks hadn't allowed more than two power play goals in a game. L.A. scored three times with the man advantage, and dropped the Sharks to.... third. Oh well, the Kings were able to climb into a four-way tie in fourth for power play goals with 34, and are averaging 2.91 goals a game.

And how about Drew Doughty? Yahoo! named Doughnuts the top star of the day, with four assists on the day. Three of those were on the power play, which helped two teams: the Kings and my fantasy team, the Four King Ice Holes, which our league counts power play points. Go Doughty!

Also scoring for the Kings: Michal (The Slovakian Scrapper) Handzus, Wayne (The Stud from Scarborough) Simmonds, Scott (The Kalamazoo Krazy) Parse and Oscar (The Savage Swede) Moller. What? You don't think Savage Swede fits?

And let's not gloss over Jonny Quick's performance, the dude faced a career-high 47 shots, completely shutting down San Jose in the first two periods. Which leads me to my biggest problem with Monday night's performance: Quick shouldn't have had to face 47 shots, at any time. The Kings might be relying on their Olympian goaltender a little too much, and that could a bad thing in the long run. In their defense, the Kings did have 16 blocked shots, so it's more a reflection of how good San Jose is this season than how bad the Kings defense has been.

All I know is when the Kings went up by four goals, I felt like Chief Brody at the end of Jaws... Next up are the hated Detroit Red Wings, who are coming into Staples on Thursday. Are you ready for all those fans in red to invade the lower bowl at Staples? Since I won't be able to attend, I need your word to mock as many of these fans as you can.

Detroit fans always have the biggest turnout in the past, although this season might be different. Detroit finds themselves rebuilding, and are near the bottom in goals scored this season. Let's hope that trend continues.

• AP: Kings end San Jose’s eight-game winning streak

“We were a little off in a lot of areas tonight,” Patrick Marleau said. “We made some mistakes on penalty kill, taking penalties and they exploited it. Our game was slipping a little bit and that was a wake up call.”

• LATimes.com: Kings are hardly intimidated

San Jose started an all-Olympic lineup of Dany Heatley, Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau of Canada up front, Canada's Dan Boyle and Sweden's Douglas Murray on defense and Russia's Evgeni Nabokov in goal. But the Kings' best players outdid the Sharks' best, and everyone else.

• LAKings.com: Kings go Shark hunting

Jonathan Quick weathered an early storm and finished with a career-high 45 saves. Against San Jose’s penalty-kill unit, one of the best in the league, the Kings went 3 for 5, and the Kings got goals from six different players – Handzus, Oscar Moller, Kopitar, Ryan Smyth, Wayne Simmonds and Scott Parse – despite being outshot 47-20. Drew Doughty had four assists in the highest-scoring game of his two-year career.

• NHL.com:  Kings blast Sharks, snap their 8-game streak

"Even though we got six goals, if (Quick) didn't play as well as he did they could have easily gotten six goals as well," Doughty said. "He's been great for us lately and pretty much all season. He did a great job tonight."

They said it

“I want to take a look at that. I’ll count that on the video. Halfway through the second period, that (shot) clock went very, very quickly. But still, I’m not going to take anything away from Quick. He did play well. He had some difficult saves that he had to make, and he responded.” – coach Terry Murray, on Quick facing a high shot total

“I think it means we have a good team. The Sharks are certainly one of the best teams in the league. We play them hard every team. Every game that we’ve played against them, we’ve got one point at least, if we didn’t get two. We just have to focus on taking that same mentality and applying it to every game, against every team. It doesn’t matter who we play. We just have to come out and compete.” – Jonathon Quick, on what it means to finish 2-0-1 in San Jose.

“He didn’t make the Olympics for nothing. He’s showing that out there right now. He’s making plays, playing with a lot of confidence. The biggest thing for me is, he’s having fun out there. That’s the most important thing.” – Anze Kopitar, on Doughty’s play.

Around the Kingdom

• The Royal Half: Big Game Hunters

Sure you can cue all the "Doughty for Norris" talk that you want... the real story will be when Doughty DOESN'T win the Norris Trophy because of old-fashioned East Coast Bias.

• LAKingsNews.com: Kings – 6, Sharks - suck

All wins are fun. All wins are worth celebrating. Some deserved special praise. So do yourselves a favor tonight. Find a Sharks’ fan and walk up to him. Get real close. Smile. And laugh.

• Hockey Buzz's Matthew Barry: Kings filet Sharks, 6-2

But earlier in the season the Kings blew a 4-0 lead to the Sharks and there was no reason to believe they wouldn’t do it again. Except they didn’t. They showed up for the 2nd period and didn’t let San Jose dictate the pace.

• Mayors Manor: Perfect for the New Year

How do you score six goals on your first 17 shots? They were playing the Sharks, not some weather-named team like the Lightning or the Hurricanes.

• View From Section 310: Happy New Year!

Oscar Moller's creativity on the powerplay showcases his superior offensive skills.  His willingness to go into corners and the tough areas of the ice to score is apparent.  He got just under 11 minutes of ice-time; almost a third of that on the powerplay.  His creativity on offense is being wasted with Raitis Ivanans on his left wing.  How do you think Oscar would look in the Kings top-6?

Across the aisle, the San Jose viewpoint

• Mercury News: San Jose Sharks lose big to Los Angeles Kings

"I don't know where everybody's heads were, but we were taught a pretty good lesson," said coach Todd McLellan.

• Fear the Fin: The Kings Would Be A Murderous Draw In The First Round

Los Angeles has amassed just too much hockey karma for all of the beatings they've taken over the last few years. I hope they shoot the lights out in the last half of the season and fall short of the division title by one point.

• Sharkspage: Kings snap 8-game Sharks' winning streak, crush San Jose 6-2

The Sharks have handled their neighbor to the south in 4 seasons since the lockout, building up a 21-9 record with an almost unconscious psychological advantage. The Kings knew they were more often than not going to lose, the fans knew it, and there was a defeatism that subtly permeated the perpetually rebuilding franchise. The stark turnaround this season has seen a quicker Los Angeles defense consistently cause problems for a tight checking San Jose team.

Peeping the dailies



<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=foxsports&vid=a777f6a0-1cbf-48c6-a1e8-31e2da1b3d88" target="_new" title="Kings smash Sharks">Video: Kings smash Sharks</a>