Joel Armia’s 2-goal night leads Kings past Mammoth

SALT LAKE CITY — Joel Armia scored twice, Adrian Kempe had a goal and assist, and the Kings beat the Utah Mammoth, 4-2, on Monday night at the Delta Center.

Anze Kopitar also scored and Kevin Fiala had two assists to help the Kings win their second in a row following a 2-3-3 stretch. Darcy Kuemper stopped 19 shots for the Kings (14-8-7), who were coming off a 6-0 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday.

“I think after that game on Saturday you come in here and feel good about your game,” Kempe told NHL.com. “Obviously, you don’t expect to go out and score six every game, but we kind of kept it going in the first period, had two goals, and then it was a tough game from there on. Second period, they kind of came back at us, and then in the third I think we started playing better again, but it was a tight game all the way to the end.”

Clayton Keller had a goal and an assist, and Dylan Guenther also scored scored for the Mammoth (14-14-3), who have lost two in a row and six of their past eight games. Karel Vejmelka finished with 23 saves.

Both teams killed power plays in the first seven minutes before the Kings broke through. Kempe got the Kings on the scoreboard 7:50 into game as he got a pass from Fiala, skated around defenseman Nate Schmidt and through the slot before putting a backhander past Vejmelka for his 10th goal of the season. He has has six points (three goals, three assists) in his past five games.

Armia made it 2-0 at 10:08 when he got a long stretch pass from Fiala and beat Vejmelka from between the circles.

“Tonight was a night where we didn’t panic at all no matter if they had a push,” Fiala told NHL.com. “It’s hockey, you know, so both teams are going to push. They’re going to have chances, and we just stayed with it, didn’t have any panic, and when it was our chance to push, we pushed right back and had great chances.”

A minute later, Mammoth forward Brandon Tanev appeared to score on a breakaway, but the Kings challenged that he was offside prior to the goal and that was confirmed after a replay review.

Utah went on its second power play of the first period when Andrei Kuzmenko was called for interference on Dylan Guenther with 1:17 left. The power play carried over to the second period and Keller tapped the puck back to Guenther, who scored 34 seconds into the period with a one-timer from the high slot to cut the deficit to 2-1. It was Guenther’s 11th goal of the season.

Kopitar restored the Kings’ two-goal lead when a loose puck came to him in the slot and he lifted it into the net at 3:27 of the third period.

Keller fired a backhand into the far top corner from the right circle to bring the Mammoth back within 3-2 at 12:15 of the final period, but Armia sealed the Kings’ win with an empty-netter with 1:38 to go.

“I thought we were dangerous in the first period,” Kings coach Jim Hiller told NHL.com. “I thought they pushed us pretty good in the second period. They got on the power play, got some momentum, got us on our heels, but I thought we gathered ourselves in the third despite them pushing a little bit at the end. I liked how we played our third period.”

Utah announced earlier Monday that the team’s leading goal-scorer, Logan Cooley, would be out indefinitely with a lower-body injury sustained Friday in a game against the Vancouver Canucks.

UP NEXT

The Kings play at Seattle on Wednesday at 7 p.m.