Penguins 5, Kings 2: Pittsburgh Walks Into LA and Leaves With the Points

Pittsburgh left Los Angeles with a 5-2 win, and nobody in purple and gold should feel great about how that one ended. Five goals on the road is a strong night's work, and two for the Kings at home is not enough to hang around in a game like this. The margin was three goals, which is the kind of gap that stops being a scare and starts looking like control.

Let's be clear about what the final score tells us and what it doesn't. We know the Penguins scored five and the Kings scored two. We know the home side couldn't turn that into a winning result. Beyond that, anyone claiming to know exactly how every goal came together is making things up, so we won't pretend otherwise here.

What the result does say is that Pittsburgh didn't need a late miracle to get it done. A three-goal victory on the road usually means the visitors handled the pressure and didn't let the building swing the game. For the Kings, two goals is a number that raises questions about finishing and about how much traffic they can generate when the game gets away from them.

It's one game, and one scoreline doesn't crown or bury anybody. But Pittsburgh looked like the more composed team on this night, and that's the takeaway worth carrying into the next matchup. Drop your own read in the thread, and tell us whether that 5-2 looked as clean from your couch as the box score suggests.