March 5 postgame quotes: Anze Kopitar

On whether there were “inspirational speeches” between the second and third periods:
“Not a lot. It was a two-goal game. You get one early – that’s what we were thinking – you get one early, well, we’ll scrap [out] another one. We didn’t think we were going to get four, but it worked out for us.

On whether he wanted to score to keep pace with Jeff Carter:
“Yeah, that ship has sailed, I think. He’s got, what, 15 now? I’ll let him beat me, but I’ll try to keep pace as much as I can.”

After several years of L.A. struggling to score, how Carter’s presence feels:
“Yeah, it’s pretty nice to see, to be honest with you, not worrying about goals all the time, because he’s been getting [them] pretty regularly. Hopefully he continues plays like that and scoring goals for us. We obviously need him.”

On whether St. Louis’ physical start came as a surprise:
“No, I don’t think so. They have a big team. We knew it was going to be a physical game. Quote-unquote, with Darryl, it was going to be ‘heavy lifting’. Those guys wanted to push us around a little bit, and we stood up pretty good and held ground and pushed back. That’s what you want to do on home ice.”

On whether the third period was the Kings “game” that they wanted to exhibit:
“Yeah, I think so. It’s skating, it’s making plays through the neutral zone. It’s been paying off the last couple of third periods. Now we just have to convert it to a 60-minute game and play a little more consistent.”

On when the Kings felt good about their chances after trailing 4-1:
“The tables started turning in the second period a little bit. They were starting to back off. I guess…it’s a 4-1 lead, you let up a little bit. We started sensing that if we got one by the end of the period, 20-minutes to go and a couple goals behind, anything’s possible. We managed to get that second one in the second period. We drew a couple of penalties. We didn’t score a power play goal, but we gained some momentum off that.”