Joey Daccord stopped 28 out of 29 shots to lead the visitors Seattle Kraken to his third victory in a row, 2-1, over Los Angeles Kings on Monday evening.
Matty Beniers and Brandon Montour scored both goals for Seattle (34-38-6, 74 points). Daccord helped with 30 blocked shots of the Kraken.
Quinton Byfield scored a goal for Los Angeles (44-24-9, 97 points), which had a four-match victory that was snapped. Despite the loss, Kings maintained a four-point lead over third place Edmonton, a 3-2 loser at Anaheim, in the Pacific Division in the battle for Hemis in the playoffs.
Darcy Kuemper finished with 26 rescues for Los Angeles. Kuemper expanded its line of allowing two goals or less to 14 matches, bound for the second longest since 1967-68 behind Calgary’s Miikka Kiprusoff’s 16 player 2003-04.
Los Angeles jumped out to 1-0 lead at brand 1:48 of the first period at Byfield’s 20th goal and tie a career high. Kyle Burrough Backhanded a shot along the left boards that Byfield died and swept in rebound with one hand.
The kings had an excellent chance to build on the lead halfway through the period when Josh Mahura took up a high -cut penalty and Adam Larsson joined Andrei Kuzmenko just nine seconds later. But Los Angeles only succeeded in a shot over 1:51 in the 5-for-3-Power game.
Seattle then took a 2-1 lead at the end of the period with two goals for 54 seconds. Beniers tied it at the mark 18:35 when he redirected a Jamie Oleksiak pass in the fold in an open network. Montour came with a wrist shot from the left circle past Kuemper’s glove and inside the far right for what turned out to be the game winner.
Kuemper held a goal on a target during a speechless second period with a trio of Class A rescue, including a highlight padded part that is rescued at Jaden Schwartz and reached back with his stick to turn away Schwartz’s wrist shot at a wide open left side of the net.
Kings, who twice hit the post on the shoots of Brandt Clarke and Warren Foegele during the third period, drew Kuemper for an extra attacker with just over two minutes left but failed to get a good score.
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