The power play overall was very up and down all night, scoring twice and giving up two shorthanded goals. There were plenty of positives and negatives from the power play on Saturday.
The Los Angeles Kings earned a huge point against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday. After going down 3-0, 4-2 and 5-2 at various points in the game, the Kings battled back to earn a 6-5 shootout loss.
It wasn't the strongest game for Pheonix Copley, who allowed five goals on 19 shots for a .737 save percentage and 3.14 goals against above expected per MoneyPuck.com.
It was a big point for the Kings, but was it a good point?
"It's a very good point we earned, it's a bad point we gave away," said Todd McLellan. "I think the resilience of the group coming back and not quitting and actually playing, for the most part, a pretty good game. The brain cramps, I can't use some words I'd like to use and the individual errors were very costly for the group as a whole and those have to get cleaned up. There's some guys that have to get sharp."
McLellan also mentioned some of Copley's struggles off the back of his comment about individual brain cramps.
"We can talk about (Copley) maybe wanting to have a save back," said McLellan. "But he stopped, I think Kev turned the puck over for another shorthanded breakaway, that was a big moment as well."
While it wasn't Copley's best game, his save on Sebastian Aho that McLellan mentioned was a very timely save. Something McLellan talked about a lot last season.
"Yeah, but they're timely both ways," said McLellan when asked about the importance of timely saves. "So, that one tonight on Aho for the potential third shorthanded goal was a huge save for us. I'm not sure we get anything out of the night if that one goes in."
That save came off a Kevin Fiala turnover at the offensive blueline, something that became a theme for him in this game. However, Fiala also added three assists.
"No, we'll take the three assists but we're not going to do the other stuff," said McLellan when asked if that's the risk and reward you have to deal with in Fiala's game. "Kev has had some really good games for us, yeah he had three assists tonight, but tonight was not one of his good games for us."
McLellan was then asked if those mistakes are starting to cause him to lose patience with Fiala.
"He's a risk and reward player," said McLellan. "We allow him to play with some risk, he's dynamic, he can clean this up quickly and he will."
The power play overall was very up and down all night, scoring twice and giving up two shorthanded goals. There were plenty of positives and negatives from the power play on Saturday.
"I would say that the shorthanded goals were, again, more individual than group or system or structure, unfortunately," said McLellan. "But to score two and pull your goalie and get another one against Carolina who's notoriously very stingy with penalty kill situations, we'll take that tonight."