Attended the game tonight and it was a fun experience. First off, it was banner raising night. So the Calder Cup was on the ice and there was a nice little ceremony. Kingston was brought out as the mascot, so that was cool. Attendance was good as well. It's a nice arena. I only live 10 minutes away, but I had never attended an event there before. Don't expect Staples level of crowd control, though. The first 10 minutes or so of the 1st period was a gong show of people standing and trying to find their seats when the puck was in play. It got better after that, but oy.
Anyway, on to the game. In typical Kings organization banner raising games, the team played like dog crap for a good portion of it. A couple of bad turnovers early (one by Kempe) and failure to clear the puck and the Baby Oilers spotted Scrivens a 3 goal lead. Yep, Ben Scrivens was in net for Bakersfield. The Reign started to play a little better in the 2nd period, but still couldn't get anything really going offensively. Then with 6 minutes to go or so in the 2nd period, the top line woke up. Mersch, Dowd and Zykov started dominating. Mersch is absolutely going to be an NHL'er and probably soon. He's so hard to handle with his size and puck protection. It makes him incredibly dangerous around the goal mouth. He banged in the first Reign goal. Then less than a minute later, Newbury, who I think is the 2nd line center, banged in another on the doorstep to make it 2-3 Bakersfield. Then about a minute later, Dowd fed Zykov on the doorstep on a 2 on 1 to make it 3-3 before Bakersfield even knew what happened. A couple of minutes later, Gravel blasted one past Scrivens from the blueline on the powerplay to make it 4-3 Reign. At that point, the Reign were in control. The Mersch/Dowd/Zykov line finished the scoring in the 3rd period off a nice fore check and then completely knocking someone off the puck and then feeding a wide open Zykov in the circle and he beat Scrivens again.
I'm no scout, but my takeaways from the game are Mersch is really good. He's not terribly creative, but he's so difficult to stop because of his size, reach and positioning. Zykov has nice hands but he also found open ice to get his shots off and had a couple of other decent scoring chances besides his 2 goals. Kempe had an uneven game. The kid skates well, but he was moved off of the line he started with, Newbury at center, to a line centered by Brodzinski later in the game. He didn't really seem to have chemistry with either line and maybe he was guilty of trying to do a little too much at times because of that. On defense, I only really paid attention to Gravel and I thought he had a good game. Made some nice plays on the puck in tight spaces to clear the zone and had some pretty decent pinches in the o-zone as well. I think he'll be on the Kings next season. He and Schultz were to the 2 best defenders to my eyes tonight.
Anyway, maybe someone else who was at the game will post a legit scouting report and add his or her 2 cents. All in all, it was nice to see an actual victory on a banner raising night for once. I'll be going to more games since it's less than $20 for a ticket + parking. Not bad at all.
