10/26 FINAL – Kings 3, Utah Hockey Club 2

The Kings played their second home game of the season on Saturday as they welcomed the NHL’s newest franchise, the Utah Hockey Club, to town. In what was the first NHL regular season game between the two clubs, they met for the first of three times this season with another home game and a trip to Salt Lake City still on the schedule.

The nuances of Thursday’s game seemingly appeared on Saturday when the Kings took home a 3-2 victory and had to deal with a trailing visiting team trying to claw its way back into the game. Like Thursday, the Kings had a good first half, but this time they couldn’t find the back of the net and spent the first 20 minutes scoreless.

The second period entered and the Kings’ offense arrived. Late on a power play, Brandt Clarke showed off his elite agility and fired a wrist shot through traffic that eventually deflected off a Utah stick and into the net. A few minutes later, Joel Edmundson scored his first goal for the Kings by crashing into the Utah net and depositing the loose puck across the goal line with 6:50 left in the period. The Kings’ 2-0 lead lasted 2:45 when newly named Utah captain Clayton Keller sliced ​​through traffic with his own wrist shot as a Kings penalty expired and cut the deficit in half.

The Kings took a 2-1 lead into the fourth period and it took just 1:09 for the good guys to extend their lead to two. Scoring his second goal of the game, Edmundson scored the first two-goal game of his NHL career in his 537th career game. Another point shot through traffic sailed past Utah’s Connor Ingram and gave the Kings a 3-2 lead. Up by a pair of goals, the Kings’ lead was cut in half again midway through the period. Rising star Logan Cooley took advantage of a pass from another rising star, Dylan Guenther, to the front of the net and tightened the score. From there, the Kings defense clamped down and helped Darcy Kuemper to its first home win of the season.

Kuemper, who returned to the Kings’ box after suffering a lower-body injury in Ottawa earlier this season, stopped 23 of 25 shots. Kuemper now has a record of 2-0-2.