ST. LOUIS — Coach Darryl Sutter had a good idea of
what the Los Angeles Kings were getting into in advance of their second round
playoff series that they now lead two games to none after a 5-2 win over the
St. Louis Blues at the Scottrade Center on Monday night.
"From a compete standpoint, if you want to be in a series against the St.
Louis Blues, you better have boys that are willing to come out of it with a
little bit of black and blue on 'em," the Kings
coach said last week.
It's something Dustin Penner knows all too well. Battling for a puck deep in
his own zone, the 6-foot-4, 242-pound winger was flattened by a clean T.J.
Oshie hip check, which led to a Mike Richards-initiated scrum with Oshie in
which he stuck up for his rattled teammate.
"I'm a big fan of him," Penner later said of Richards. "I think
he's got a lot of fans. He arrives to every part of the ice with ill
humor." Penner later tweeted his support to Richards, using a hash tag of "#thatsleadership."
It's not only leadership, it's some good chemistry shown between the two
players who connected on a goal 31 seconds into the game that set the tone for
a first period in which the Kings outscored the Blues 4-0. The line of
Richards, Penner and Jeff Carter combined for five points in the first period
to put Los Angeles in prime position to win a game that deteriorated into a
physical and at times malevolent battle that featured 110 penalty minutes and
plenty of the bumps, scrapes, and black and blue marks foretold by Sutter last
week.
It was also the Kings' seventh straight playoff road win, dating back to Games
2 and 5 in San Jose last April. Los Angeles is 5-0 on the road in the 2012
postseason, obviously a major foundation of what is beginning to resemble
something special for a team that has only made it past the second round of the
playoffs once since entering the NHL in the 1967-68 season.
"We just kind of come out there, we kind of like playing against the other
team's crowd," Drew Doughty said prior to Game 2. "They're all into
it for them booing us or whatever it may be. . . . Just getting pucks in deep,
forechecking them, hitting them as much as we can, and being able to beat a
team in front of their own crowd is just a great feeling, and when we go home,
we kind of got treated that way, too."
The Kings are whipping up that old-fashioned recipe for winning road games:
relying on goaltending and special teams.
While the power play has been non-existent since the second game of the
Vancouver series, Los Angeles' penalty killing has more than made up for any
shortcomings. After an 0-for-9 effort Monday, the Blues are 0 for 12 with the
man advantage in the series and a startling 0 for 26 against the Kings since
the start of the regular season. They also allowed a short-handed goal for the
second game in a row, meaning Los Angeles has now outscored its opponents 4-3
when short-handed this postseason.
Dustin Brown earned an assist on Anze Kopitar's breathtaking deke around Brian
Elliott for the short-handed tally, giving Brown four short-handed points
through the team's first seven playoff games. Henrik Zetterberg was the last
player to score as many points a man down, though his five shorthanded points
in the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs were notched in 22 games.
The Kings' penchant for opportune goals also reared its welcome head in Monday’s
road effort, with Justin Williams re-establishing a four-goal lead only 68
seconds after Andy McDonald opened the second period with a goal off a
redirection 18 seconds in.
"It's a big goal for us, right?" Sutter asked rhetorically.
"They scored a goal. It was a shoot-in and our defensemen didn't respond
to it, and we come right back and score again. It's a big goal."
All of these facets, combined with a 27-save performance by Jonathan Quick,
have the Kings in a favorable position heading back to Staples Center for Game
3 on Thursday night.
"Well, I know there are a lot of good players on our team," Sutter
said after the game. "It's hard, getting them to play all together at the
same time. You know, I just look at is as we're in a series. I don't look at an
overview like that. We came here and we had a tough first period in the last
game, and we had a good second and third. Tonight, we had an awesome first, and
I don't think we played well after that. So, we've got some work to do here
[to] get ready again."
