Despite a strong effort by the Los Angeles Kings to push for a point against the Minnesota Wild on Monday evening after facing a 3-0 deficit, they can only blame themselves.
The Kings are holding themselves back as they continue to rack up the minor penalties in this young 2025-26 campaign.
In fact, after their 4-3 shootout loss to the Wild, the Kings are second in the league in penalty minutes (55 PIMS) and penalties taken (23). Only the Chicago Blackhawks are ahead of them in those two categories.
In the first period against Minnesota, Los Angeles took four minor penalties. Because of that, the Kings can’t play the game they planned.
Wild Weather Kings’ Late Comeback, Edge Out Los Angeles 4–3 in ShootoutAnother game, another overtime game that ends in a shootout for the Los Angeles Kings. This time, the match doesn’t go in the King's favor; it ends in a shootout loss in Minnesota, 4-3.
The line combinations get mixed up, skilled players such as Kevin Fiala and Andrei Kuzmenko don’t see the ice as much because they aren’t penalty killers, and that hurts the flow.
“First off, we need to stay out of the box,” defenseman Drew Doughty told reporters after the game.
“One of our strengths is rolling four lines, three D-pairs, and once you get penalties, the momentum goes away.”
Not only will a parade to the penalty box ruin the team’s momentum, but it can also ruin the scoreboard.
With about five minutes remaining in the first period, center Quinton Byfield took a delay-of-game penalty as he chucked the puck over the glass, trying to flip the puck up the ice.
“We’re taking too many penalties, and I might be the main guy, I’ve taken a ton,” Byfield told reporters. “So, that’s something that we’ve got to fix.”
It didn’t help that 18 seconds after Byfield’s penalty, right winger Adrian Kempe was called for hooking on Wild superstar Kirill Kaprizov.
By that point, the score is already 1-0 for Minnesota, and now the Kings need to kill off a 5-on-3 penalty for almost a full two minutes.
Sure enough, the Wild score twice, 20 seconds apart, taking advantage of both power-play opportunities created by Byfield and Kempe.
With that, Los Angeles gave Minnesota a huge head start and a 3-0 lead going into the second period. From that point on, the Kings needed to chase the game. And to their credit, the team was great at 5-on-5.
“We’re taking too many penalties and we’re getting scored on,” Kings coach Jim Hiller admitted.
However, he shed some light on how the team played at even strength in the last couple of outings.
“Our 5-on-5 game is starting to feel a little bit more like how we play,” Hiller said. “We’re going to score goals, I’m not worried about that, but we just have to tighten it up. I think we’re getting there. We take some of the penalties away, we’ll be a good team.”
The Kings are now 1-2-1 with the Pittsburgh Penguins coming to town on Thursday.