Kings did better in Buffalo than the previous two seasons, but hardly a strong start. Through the first 40 minutes, the Kings had been, as Daryl Evans said, "outplayed in pretty much every facet of the game" and only strong work by Kuemper had kept them in the game.
Kuemper stopped a penalty shot in the 1st period, and when Buffalo scored in the final seconds of the period, it got waved off because the clock hit 0.0 just before the puck hit the line. In the 2nd period he benefited from a shot off the post.
Meanwhile, the Kings' decision to trade their defensive 1-3-1 for a theoretically more active 1-2-2 hadn't produced any good looks (Danault had a shot at a half-open net, but couldn't put the shot on goal). Late in the 2nd, the Kings had a power play, but Quinton Byfield botched the attempted entry to the offensive zone, and Buffalo had a short-handed breakaway. Kuemper stopped Alex Tuch, but couldn't control the rebound and Tuch put it in for the lead.
And then the Kings couldn't do anything with the rest of the power play, and then took a stupid penalty of their own, and had to be on the PK for the rest of the period. Fortunately, early in the 3rd, Alex LaFerriere made a good steal in the Buffalo end, fed Kopitar in the slot, and we had a goal of our own. (Not quite a shorty, as the penalty expired, but close enough.)
And then there was yet another period of choppy, mediocre and frankly BORING hockey, with lots of penalties and yet no real chances. As the clock wound down, the Kings were trying to convert combined penalty #9 without much luck, when the Sabres were called for a (not-terribly-convincing) penalty #10, and even the Kings could handle a two-man advantage, with a nice high-low-high play feeding an unguarded Kopitar in the right circle and Anze put it home to give us our first lead of the season.
Buffalo pulled the goalie and entered the Kings zone, but couldn't get the puck in the middle and circling it around the boards let Joel Edmundsson show off one of his limited skills. He stapled a Sabre to boards, the puck went behind the net, Gavrikov got it, Kempe called to him, Gav made a nice blind pass out in front, Kempe lofted it down to the other end, Byfield got there in time to avoid the icing, the Sabres converged on him, he found Kopitar in the slot and that was that.
So a 3-1 win, and a natural hat trick for Kopi. It's nice to have a Hall of Famer, I admit.
But when the highlight of your game is the empty-net goal, you really weren't doing so well. Hope we can raise our game in Boston, tomorrow.
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Oddly enough, this was only the 7th hat trick of Kopitar's career, even though he has over 400 career goals.
Even odder, this is the 2nd time he's had a hat trick on Opening Night. Give it up for adrenaline, I suppose. (Way back when, Kopi had two goals in his NHL debut. Same thing, I guess.)
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Both tomorrow's game and Monday in Ottawa are afternoon tilts. (Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving.) I hope the Kings have adjusted to Eastern Time; "morning games" are fairly tough for West Coast teams, especially back-to-back.