The Tampa Bay Lightning were determined not to lose two straight at home.
Team captain Martin St. Louis did more than his share to make sure it didn't occur.
St. Louis had two goals and an assist, Ben Bishop improved to 4-0, and the Lightning beat the Los Angeles Kings 5-1 on Tuesday night.
Tampa Bay was coming off a 5-4 loss to Pittsburgh Saturday night in which Matt Niskanen scored a tiebreaking power-play goal with 18.6 seconds left.
"It was important to answer," St. Louis said. "I felt like we gave up at least one point last game. In his league at home, you've got a homestand, you can't lose two in a row. I thought we answered pretty well from the get-go."
St. Louis has four goals and 10 points during a five-game point streak. He assisted on Malone's goal for his 900th point with the Lightning. Including his time with Calgary, St. Louis has 922 points, which is 94th on the NHL career list.
"Remarkable ... To be able to continue to excell for as long as he's played in this league," Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said of the 38-year old St. Louis. "He still considers himself a young kid. And to just be able to have a front row seat, I'm glad I'm here to watch this."
Ryan Malone, Teddy Purcell and Ondrej Palat had the other Tampa Bay (4-2) goals.
Bishop made a strong save in the second on Trevor Lewis' shot from the low left circle. The goalie had missed one game after having his right leg jammed during the third period of last Thursday's game against Florida.
Los Angeles (4-3) goalie Jonathan Quick was pulled late in the second after allowing three goals on 17 shots. Quick had a 3-0 record with an 0.55 goals-against-average in four previous games against Tampa Bay.
"We clearly out-played them the second period and we're still down," Los Angeles coach Darryl Sutter said. "Their goalie was outstanding."
Slava Voynov scored for the Kings, who had a three-game winning atreak end. His goal ended Bishop's shutout bid at 10:27 of the third.
St. Louis ended Quick's night on a goal from the low slot that gave the Lightning a 3-0 advantage with 3:38 remaining in the second.
Malone put the Lightning up 1-0 when he re-directed Sami Salo's shot just 19 seconds into the game.
"I thought we did a good job of getting off to a good start," said Bishop, who made 30 saves. "Score on the first shift like that, big momentum for our team and we kind of kept it going."
Purcell made it 2-0 from the low left circle on Tampa Bay's eighth shot with 7:16 left in the first.
"We've got to just regroup after this game, throw it out and realize we need a lot better effort and a lot better detail out of our game," Kings defenseman Matt Greene said. "We just didn't break their speed. We've got to do a better job in the neutral zone to kind of combat that, and we didn't do a very good job tonight. We've just got to learn from it and move on."
St. Louis got his second goal of the game with 7:20 to play. Palat scored late in the third to extend the Lightning lead to 5-1.
Voynov hit the post late in the first for the Kings, who had a goal 32 seconds into the second disallowed because of incidental contact with the goalie. Los Angeles also failed to score during a 4-minute power after Salo received a high-sticking penalty at 3:08 of the second.
The Kings, who had 10 shots on the power play, went 0 for 5 with the man advantage. Tampa Bay failed to convert on its three opportunties.
NOTES: Bishop was briefly shaken up after taking Daniel Carcillo's shot off the mask late in the first. ... Ben Scrivens replaced Quick and gave up two goals on eight shots. ... Kings D Drew Doughty was minus-4 for the game. ... This was just the fourth time in the last 10 years that the Kings played a road game against Tampa Bay.
