Trevor Moore, Kings beat Coyotes to extend road winning streak – Orange County Register

By JACK MAGRUDER The Associated Press

TEMPE, Ariz. — At some point, the Kings will lose a road game, but it remains their comfort zone for now.

Trevor Moore scored two goals and the Kings extended their season-opening road winning streak to eight games with a 4-1 victory over the Arizona Coyotes on Monday night.

Anze Kopitar and Phillip Danault also scored and Pheonix Copley made 30 saves for the Kings, who are tied for the third-longest such streak in NHL history. Buffalo holds the record by winning its first 10 road games in 2006-07.

“We are a veteran team,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “We have been together as a group for a long time. We understand what our structure is. Our game management skills have gotten better from the start of the year until now.

“All of those things are really important when you play on the road. We seem to play a simpler game. Everybody pulls on the rope the right way. We don’t need outstanding games from everybody every night. We just need good games, and we’ve been getting them.”

Lawson Crouse scored and Connor Ingram made 21 saves for Arizona, which played its seventh home game of the season. Ingram is 6-2 in his eight starts this season, and Crouse has scored in three of the last four games and eight of the last 10.

The Kings killed all six penalties, including a double minor on Adrian Kempe when the score was 3-1 midway through the third period. The Kings have not given up a power-play goal in the last seven games and 26 penalty-kill situations.

“First, we are blocking a lot of shots,” Copley said. “We’re taking away lanes. I thought we did a really good job keeping them to the outside. We’ve been sticking to keeping it simple, and that has been leading to the success.”

Copley gave up three goals in the first 8:31 before being pulled in the Kings’ 5-4 victory here on Oct. 27, and McLellan said the Kings targeted this game for his return. Cam Talbot had started the last three and eight of the last 10.

“In the back of our minds we were always thinking about playing him here again,” McLellan said. “Back to the scene of the crime. But not his crime. Our crime. Try to get the players to respond to him and he to them.”

Moore scored a short-handed goal at 3:36 of the first period. Danault picked up a pass that ricocheted off of Moore’s skate and returned it to Moore, who picked it up along the center side boards and beat Ingram with a wrist shot high to the glove side.

Kopitar made it 2-0 five minutes later when he took a nifty backhand pass from Quinton Byfield and found an open side. Kopitar has four goals and six points in the last four games against the Coyotes.

“Todd put a pretty big emphasis on our start and we wanted to be better,” Moore said.

The Kings, playing on the fifth anniversary of McLellan’s hiring, improved to 8-0-1 when scoring first.