-- The sports fans at Ford Field had a much better time, for sure. If you chose to attend the Red Wings game, you made the wrong choice.
Goalie Jonathan Quick frustrated the Wings through two periods, then the Kings exploded in the third for a 5-0 victory.
Quick stopped 38 shots through two periods, and a career-high 51 for the game while earning his second shutout of the season.
"He played great for them," Nicklas Lidstrom said. "He made the first stops and rebound saves, and he played real well. We wanted to get a lot of shots on him and he played excellent."
Anze Kopitar had two goals, and Wayne Simmonds, Oscar Moller and Jack Johnson (power play) scored for the Kings. Drew Doughty had three assists and Dustin Brown had two.
Detroit (19-7-3, 41 points) saw its modest two-game win streak end. Los Angeles (17-10-1, 35 points) has won four of its last five games and defeated Detroit twice this season.
"We did some good things, tilted the rink, had traffic, but their goalie was good," coach Mike Babcock said. "Those things happen to you. You don't want to lose 5-0 at home, but we did some real good things."
Within striking distance while trailing 2-0 after two periods, the Wings imploded to start the third period.
Kopitar scored twice 2 minutes and 36 seconds apart (his 12th and 13th goals) against goalie Jimmy Howard, and the rout was on. Johnson (Bloomfield Hills) made it 5-0 with his second goal at 6:03.
"We gave them too good of chances," said Babcock of Kopitar's goals, one a rebound and the other a deflection near the crease.
The Wings had two power plays while down 1-0 midway in the second period but couldn't convert.
Moller than tapped in a goal off a Doughty shot from the top of the slot at 13:39 of the second, further frustrating the Wings.
"We couldn't capitalize on a couple of chances we had and that's where the power plays has to click," Lidstrom said. "You need a goal on the power play to get the team going and we couldn't do that tonight."
Give a lot of credit to Quick, who earned his 10th career shutout and made every save possible.
"He was unbelievable, he played stellar," said Howard, who had a good view at the opposite end of the rink. "Once in a while you're going to run into that, when a goalie stands completely on his head. He was stopping everything."
What would it have taken for the Wings to get a puck past Quick?
"It would have taken an ugly, ugly, ugly goal to get rid of that zero," Howard said.
Babcock remembered a game last season when Howard was similarly stellar in Los Angeles and earned two points for the Wings.
"They're (the Kings) probably feeling the same way tonight," Babcock said. "That's hockey sometimes."
Ice chips
It was the first time Detroit was shut out at home since Dec. 23, 2009, when Chicago's Antti Niemi blanked them.
