Trevor Moore scored two goals and the Los Angeles Kings extended their season-opening road winning streak to eight games with a 4-1 victory over the Arizona Coyotes on Monday.
Anze Kopitar and Phillip Danault also scored and Pheonix Copley made 30 saves for the Kings, who are tied for the third-longest such streak in NHL history. Buffalo holds the record by winning its first 10 road games in 2006-07.
“We are a veteran team,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “We have been together as a group for a long time. We understand what our structure is. Our game management skills have gotten better from the start of the year until now.
“All of those things are really important when you play on the road. We seem to play a simpler game. Everybody pulls on the rope the right way. We don’t need outstanding games from everybody every night. We just need good games, and we’ve been getting them.”
Lawson Crouse scored and Connor Ingram made 21 saves for the Coyotes, who played their seventh home game of the season. Ingram is 6-2 in his eight starts this season, and Crouse has scored in three of the last four games and eight of the last 10.
“First, we are blocking a lot of shots,” Copley said. “We’re taking away lanes. I thought we did a really good job keeping them to the outside. We’ve been sticking to keeping it simple, and that was has been leading to the success.”
Copley gave up three goals in the first 8:31 before being pulled in the Kings’ 5-4 victory here Oct. 27, and McLellan said the Kings targeted this game for his return. Cam Talbot had started the last three and eight of the last 10.
“In the back of our minds we were always thinking about playing him here again,” McLellan said. “Back to the scene of the crime. But not his crime. Our crime. Try to get the players to respond to him and he to them.”
Moore scored a short-handed goal at 3:36 of the first period. Danault picked up a pass that ricocheted off a Moore’s skate and returned it to Moore, who picked it up along the center side boards and beat Ingram with a wrist shot high to the glove side.
“Todd put a pretty big emphasis on our start and we wanted to be better,” Moore said.
Copley saved breakaways by Jason Zucker and Nick Schmaltz in the final nine minutes of the first period, and Crouse missed the net on a breakaway in the last minute.
“We played solid defensively,” Coyotes coach Andre Tourigny said. “Even offensively, we created a lot of chances but did not bury them. We did a lot of good things. It was just a matter of execution.”
