Kings coach Terry Murray asserted his control over his team on Saturday night with Calgary in town by moving players in and out of the lineup and switching up his lines. In were Tom Preissing and Brian Boyle, and out were Derek Armstrong and Kyle Calder. Brad Richardson continues to sit. He played the first game of the season, missed three, played four, and now is missing his second in a row again.

The first line is now once again Brown, Kopitar, and Moulson. The latter had been on the fourth line with Armstrong and Ivanans against Vancouver Thursday.

The second unit is Frolov, Stoll, and Moller. The third man there, Oscar Moller, is playing his tenth NHL game. This confirms the fact that he won’t be returned to his WHL Junior team for the year. If demoted, it would be to Junior, since he’s too young for the AHL, but the fact that the Kings have kept him up indicates that this is where he’ll spend the year. He ended up scoring two goals, and said afterward, “I was happy to score. I have to keep going and be consistent, but I can’t get too comfortable here. I can’t slack off. I want to stick around here all year long and play on the second line.”

The third is Simmonds, O’Sullivan, and Handzus. Simmonds, too, is now in his tenth game of the season, and thus won’t be going back to the OHL. He could, of course, find himself in Manchester at some point, but the way he’s played so far, there’s no reason to think that will happen anytime soon. He’s making smart plays, has his first goal out of the way, and shows speed to go along with his puck sense.

The fourth line against the Flames consisted of Ivanans, Boyle, and a revolving crew of others, including Peter Harrold. The latter is a defenseman, but the lineup Murray iced included seven of those, so the youngster from Kirtland Hills, Ohio spent some time at forward, something his coach commented on after the game. More on that later.

Of course, things changed as the game went along, and in the second and third periods, Handzus, Simmonds, and Ivanans could be seen together (at least three times), and at least once, Harrold played with O’Sullivan and Boyle. In addition, at around the halfway point in the third, Murray had Kopitar and Brown out with Frolov.

Defensively, the Kings featured Matt Green, the aforementioned Harrold, Sean O’Donnell, Drew Doughty, Denis Gauthier, Kyle Quincey, and Preissing.

The game itself was featured on Hockey Night in Canada, and thankfully despite USC playing a late afternoon football game, a crowd of decent size assembled. No sense creating too much resentment in the folks in Canada looking at empty seats while they wish and save for a ticket to a game in their hometown.

Despite the night before having been Halloween, on this evening, the ghosts of posts were out, and the puck bounced here and there, off legs and players. Sometimes, that resulted in a goal. That was the case for the first for Calgary, which went in off Michal Handzus in a play neither he nor Jason LaBarbera in net could have done anything about. This in the first period, which wound up at 1-0 for the visitors.

The second period was all Los Angeles with the Kings outshooting the Flames 15-6 and outplaying them by a considerable margin. This started with a tough physical approach which saw them hit and be hit but not back down to the team from the Oil Patch. But again the bounces—the Kings just didn’t get any. They crashed in on Kiprusoff and had him looking to the rafters, perhaps instead of glaring at his defense for not protecting him more. But the first team to score in the period was his Flames, on the power play on a shot by Adrian Aucoin that caught the top corner.

After that, a bounce went the Kings’ way on the power play when Oscar Moller put a pass out in front which would have been grabbed by Handzus had not Dion Phaneuf stuck a leg in the way and deflected it past his goaltender. The period ended 2-1 and with the Kings on the power play, 4-on-3 actually since a guy from each side had gone off after a late scrum and then Rene Bourque had taken a needless crosschecking penalty with eleven seconds to go.

The third was again all Kings, and finally, they got a bounce. Stoll made a good check behind the Calgary net and Frolov threw the puck back to the defense. A shot by Quincey was blocked by a Flames defenseman, but it bounced right to Moller, who swept in a wrist shot. The game was 2-2, and it should have been at least that or had the Kings ahead.

“A point, a point, or two” must have been the mantra of Kings fans, but with just over three minutes left, Kopitar played soft on Bertuzzi behind the LA net, allowing him to make a pass out front on his backhand to Daymond Langkow, who scored. The face of Terry Murray on the big screen showed surprise and disappointment.

After the game, the even-tempered Murray was first complimentary to his team. “That was a good hockey game tonight. We played very well. We played, [pause] from the dots to the boards, as good as we’ve played this year. Competitive play, coming up with pucks. We’re starting to understand that coming up with that effort, being competitive every night comes from doing these little things along the boards. There’s a feeling that starts to grow in your locker room with the young players that they have confidence that they can play with teams in this league.”

The question period went on through queries about Moller and again an attempt to get the coach to speak about the final goal. Instead, he talked about the second one, with disappointment saying “that’s the play we need to address tomorrow at the rink.”

Things went to Boyle, (“he was pretty good; he took advantage of his minutes”) and Harrold as a forward (“I had visions of Streit in Montreal last year”). Finally, Murray got to Kopitar’s mistake. “There has to be more dig in there. That’s the stuff that the good teams do. They don’t give up goals late in the game. They have to get the job done. More competitive situation, two hands on the stick and playing aggressive in the one-on-one situation.”

A penalty by Jerome Iginla inside the last two minutes gave the Kings final air, but they presssed and didn’t score thanks to a couple of great stops by Kiprusoff with more traffic in front of him than on the 405 on Friday afternoon.

Looking up and down the lineup, the Kings are getting good minutes out of almost everyone, but one to note is Michal Handzus. He plays on the PK as well as Power Play, is getting shots, is recording hits, and generally is playing bigger than ever. At one point Saturday, he was in front of the net and got clocked by a Calgary defenseman. He got right up and came back to get credit for the Kings’ first goal initially. This was retracted when it was reviewed and credited to Moller on the deflection off Phaneuf. But if the puck had carried across the crease, Handzus was there and likely would have knocked in his third goal of the season. On the night, he had two shots and five hits and was 17-6 (74%) on his face-offs.

The LA team outplayed Calgary, registering 36 shots to the Flames’ 21, 42 hits to half that number, 21, by Calgary, and showing a 62% winning advantage in face-offs. And but for one moment of lax play, they would have had a tie and perhaps a win in OT.

They sit at the bottom of the Pacific Division, and early predictions that they won’t make the playoffs look more likely with every lost opportunity. But score aside, they are playing good hockey, and exciting hockey. Nobody who had bought a ticket (there were 16,279 in attendance on Saturday evening) could go away saying that the home team is uninspiring. But for a bounce or two, and a defensive effort which lasted all sixty minutes, the Kings would have had something to show for a good night.

Kings Notes

The press box featured a number of notable players of the past, at work in various capacities for teams around the league. Rick Kehoe, Jim Pappin, Lorne Henning, Mel Bridgman, Dave Taylor, and others were in attendance.

Jack Johnson spent some time in the press area watching also. He’s not due back for several months, but he’s obviously keeping up his conditioning, judging by how he looks.