ANAHEIM — After working overtime on Black Friday, the Kings will be right back to it on Saturday, hosting the Vancouver Canucks.
They let a two-goal lead filter through their fingers on Friday afternoon, falling to the Ducks, 5-4 in a shootout, and will now face a Vancouver club that also played on Friday, losing to the Sharks, 3-2, in San Jose.
Of the Kings’ 24 games this season, 19 have been decided either by one goal (17 instances) or a goal plus an empty-netter.
“Games are [decided by] one goal, I just think it’s a product of everybody being pretty tight and everybody feeling like they’ve got a chance to win,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said.
Gone are the days when teams like the Ducks, Sharks or Chicago Blackhawks were viewed as light work on the schedule, and here is an NHL in which only six of its 32 teams are below a .500 points percentage.
“This year, every team’s got some pretty dangerous players, so they feel like, ‘hey, we’re still in this,’ so you get a pretty good push from the other team,” Hiller said after squandering a lead against his crosstown rivals.
While the Kings came up empty on their only power play on Friday – they are five for their past 52 opportunities with the extra man – they scored four even-strength goals for the fifth time this season.
“We did a good job of creating some chances and trying to stay patient,” defenseman Brian Dumoulin said.
He added: “I thought we did a good job of defending them off the rush and transitioning off of that.”
The Kings scored once off a counterattack and another time while capitalizing off a poor line change, with their other two goals coming off point shots into traffic. Yet they couldn’t cash in late in regulation, in overtime or the shootout, losing for the second time this season in the six games that have seen them score four or more goals.
“They finished, and we had our chances, too, but we couldn’t finish,” Hiller said.
While the Kings have very much tightened up defensively since their faceplant out of the starting blocks, Vancouver has struggled in its own end all season. That’s thanks in no small part to injuries to its top two goalies, starter Thatcher Demko and backup Kevin Lankinen, who often struggled when he was available.
Their absences have contributed heavily to the Canucks being tied with the Edmonton Oilers for the league’s highest goals-against average and owning exclusively its worst penalty-kill percentage.
Defenseman Quinn Hughes, who won the Norris Trophy two seasons ago, leads the Canucks in scoring on a per-game basis in the penultimate season of his contract. His 22 points in 20 games equal the output of center Elias Pettersson in 25 appearances.
CANUCKS AT KINGS
When: Saturday, 7 p.m.
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV: FDSN West, KCAL (Ch. 9)