{"id":629024,"date":"2026-03-03T10:58:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/629024\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T10:58:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:58:14","slug":"kings-comeback-falls-short-in-loss-to-nhl-leading-avalanche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/629024\/","title":{"rendered":"Kings’ comeback falls short in loss to NHL-leading Avalanche"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Devon Toews<\/a> scored the tiebreaking goal late in the third period, Martin Necas<\/a> added an empty-netter to go with two assists, and the Colorado Avalanche defeated the Kings 4-2<\/a> on Monday night.<\/p>\n

Toews got free in the slot and converted Nathan MacKinnon\u2019s pass with 4:55 remaining to help the Avalanche (40-10-9) become the first NHL team with 40 wins this season.<\/p>\n

MacKinnon and Gabriel Landeskog each had a goal and an assist. Mackenzie Blackwood made 19 saves for Colorado, which has won five of seven.<\/p>\n

Brandt Clarke<\/a> had a power-play goal, Angus Booth scored in his NHL debut, and Anton Forsberg<\/a> made 35 saves for the Kings, who were playing their first game since firing coach Jim Hiller on Sunday<\/a> and replacing him on an interim basis with D.J. Smith.<\/p>\n

The Kings were also missing seven key players because of injury or illness, including medalists from the Olympic hockey tournament at the Milan-Cortina Games in defenseman Drew Doughty<\/a>, forwards Joel Armia<\/a> and Quinton Byfield and goalie Darcy Kuemper<\/a>. Those absences led to the Kings giving three players their NHL debuts in Booth, center Kenny Connors and winger Jared Wright.<\/p>\n

With Kuemper ill, the Kings also recalled Erik Portillo to back up Forsberg. Armia was placed on injured reserve before the game.<\/p>\n

The Avalanche capitalized early, scoring twice in the opening 10:13 on one-timers from MacKinnon and Landeskog, before the Kings responded with a power-play goal from Clarke late in the first period.<\/p>\n

An early whistle wiped out Necas putting in a rebound early in the second, and Booth got to the top of the crease to tip in Brian Dumoulin\u2019s centering pass to tie it 2-all at 8:32.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Devon Toews scored the tiebreaking goal late in the third period, Martin Necas added an empty-netter to go…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":629025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[268345,38124,4830,268347,1582,276,193247,75669,42155,4451,193581,21132,2961,224,5337,75670,69954,268346,17946,44317],"class_list":["post-629024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-angus-booth","tag-assist","tag-avalanche","tag-brandt-clarke","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-devon-toews","tag-gabriel-landeskog","tag-goal","tag-illness","tag-key-player","tag-king","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-martin-necas","tag-nathan-mackinnon","tag-nhl-debut","tag-pass","tag-save"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}