Out of Town Scoreboard: Golden Knights move closer to Western Conference crown with win over Kings

There was a busy night of action in the NHL on Thursday, highlighted by a head-to-head between the Vegas Golden Knights and Los Angeles Kings. Let’s go through what happened and what’s next…

The Golden Knights hosted the Kings in an important Pacific Division showdown and Vegas ran away with the game early. They scored four goals in the first period and chased Joonas Korpisalo from the crease when they made the score 5-0 early in the second frame. The Kings scored a couple of goals in the second period but couldn’t pull off a comeback and the Golden Knights won by a score of 5-2.

Vegas has just one regulation loss in their last 10 games, which came when they were dropped 7-4 by the Edmonton Oilers a couple of weeks ago. The Kings, meanwhile, played a stretch of six games against Pacific Division opponents and they won just two of the games.

The Seattle Kraken hosted the Arizona Coyotes and cruised to a 4-2 win and clinched their first-ever playoff appearance in the process. After posting a 27-49-6 in their inaugural season last year, the Kraken have a 44-26-8 record with four games left on their schedule. Seattle could still jump over the Kings in the standings and into third place in the Pacific Division.

The win by Vegas over L.A. puts the Golden Knights in a very good spot to finish with the best record in both the Pacific Division and Western Conference. They’re now three points up on the Oilers with the same amount of games played, while Edmonton is also three points up on the Kings for home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

The Kraken could still jump over the Kings and into third place in the Pacific Division, as they’re four points back of L.A. with one game in hand. The battle for the second wild-card spot is very interesting, as the Flames and Jets are tied with 89 points while the Predators remain in the mix with 88 points.