Corey Perry and Tony DeAngelo dropped the mitts, Gino Hard posted this morning, after a rough Thursday night for the Los Angeles Kings.
The Kings lost 5-2 to the Islanders at home, their third straight defeat. They sit 30th in the NHL at 5-10-2, and a fight is the kind of moment that gets attention when a team is searching for any kind of response.
Perry's line from the game fits the story. He took five penalty minutes in 7:58 of ice time and didn't register a shot.
Gino Hard posted that DeAngelo and Perry dropped the mitts.
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Perry is 41 years old, and he has never been shy about the physical side of the game. This season he has 2 goals and 1 assist in 15 games, with 11 penalty minutes and a -6 rating.
Nothing in the post says what set it off, or who got the better of it. Expect that to be the first question the Kings are asked after the next practice.
The rest of the night was uglier than any scrap. Darcy Kuemper stopped 16 of 20 shots in net, and Trevor Moore and Quinton Byfield scored the two Los Angeles goals.
Does a fight actually change anything for the Kings?
Not by itself. Los Angeles has scored 47 goals and allowed 60, a -13 goal differential, and no amount of energy from a fourth-line winger fixes that.
The home ice is the bigger problem. The Kings are 2-7-0 in their own building, while their road record is 3-3-2. Peter Laviolette's group is better away from home right now, which is not how a team usually wants to build a season.
A fight can still matter in a locker room. When a team is losing and a veteran stands up for a teammate, or for the group, players notice. But Perry has only 3 points, and the Kings need the guys who play 20 minutes a night to answer, not the one who played fewer than eight.
Los Angeles gets a chance to show it Saturday against the Flames, with a three-game losing streak still hanging over the room.
This article was written with the help of artificial intelligence, based on public reports and official sources.
Does a fight like Perry's help a struggling team?
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