Tenacious spree lifts Kings
KINGS 6 ST. LOUIS 3
ST. LOUIS — Anze Kopitar had a goal and two assists and Jonathan Quick made 28 saves as the Kings beat the St. Louis Blues 6-3 on Sunday night.
Alex Iafallo, Carl Grundstrom, Gabriel Vilardi, Lias Andersson and Drew Doughty each scored for the Kings, who earned a split of the two-game road series.
“There was a tenacity to us,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “We were responsible. I thought it was the first time we took the game to a team rather than receiving it.”
The Kings took the lead on a pair of goals just 23 seconds apart in the first period. With Torey Krug in the penalty box for hooking, Iafallo swatted a loose puck in the crease with 1:47 remaining in the opening period to tie it at 1.
Grundstrom put a move on Vince Dunn and faked Justin Faulk to his knees before beating Ville Husso for his first goal of the season.
“Getting on the board with a power-play goal again was pretty big for us,” said Kopitar, who is tied with Toronto’s Mitch Marner and Edmonton’s Connor McDavid for the NHL scoring lead with 10 points. “We just started generating more and more and the pucks started going in for us.”
The Kings expanded the lead 6:25 into the second period when Dustin Brown picked off a pass from Dunn and set up Vilardi for his third goal of the season.
Just 1:57 later, Kopitar deflected a shot from Adrian Kempe past Husso to expand the Kings’ lead to 4-1.
Brayden Schenn scored twice for St. Louis, and Husso stopped 29 shots in his first NHL start. The Blues have lost the second game in all three of their twogame series this season.
“We show spurts in second games,” Schenn said. “I think we think it’s going to be easier at times because we get the first win. It’s certainly not, and so far through the short part of the season on the second game, we’ve been very average and we’ve got to fix that.”
St. Louis went on the power play when Andersson was penalized for hooking with 4:52 remaining in the second. However, Kopitar set up Andersson streaking out of the box to make it 5-1.
“We came out in the second period and we just played uninspired hockey more than anything,” Blues coach Craig Berube said.