The Los Angeles Kings are on a very nice run. They have won five out of their last six games. Their only loss in that span was a one-goal road game against the Calgary Flames. This is a team that has been even better than expected so far this season.
Their most recent win came on Wednesday night against a very good (but currently struggling) Edmonton Oilers team. They won the game by a final score of 3-1. They did a good job containing the NHL’s two leading scorers in Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl as neither collected a point.
Los Angeles played a great road game against that team that is so fast and so skilled. A hat trick by Trevor Moore is what powered the Kings passed the Oilers. He scored his first two goals on the goaltender and then deposited the empty netter for the three-goal game.
Moore became the first California-born player in NHL history to score a hat trick for a California-based team. We always hear about growing the game and hearing this fact is great for that initiative. The more kids that try hockey in “untraditional markets”, the more great players we will see.
Trevor Moore put on a show for the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday night.
All three goals scored by Moore were assisted by Viktor Arvidsson who has just been a magnificent addition to the Kings. He is up to 13 points this season which is tied for fifth on the team while Moore is tied for second with 15 points. They really help the balance up front for Los Angeles.
Seeing players like Moore score hat tricks are ways that you can tell that a team is good. He isn’t necessarily one of the go-to scorers on the team, but he (and Arvidsson) was able to lead the offense to a big win on the road over a high-octane Oilers team.
This win helped the Kings create some separation between them and the Oilers in the NHL standings. It is early, but it is never too early to care about big divisional wins in a playoff race.
Now, the Kings are coming back west to finish off a four-game Pacific Division road trip. It starts with the Vancouver Canucks on Friday and then finishes with the Seattle Kraken on Saturday. This is a great team that is only going to get better as the years go by.