The evolving Kings-Blues rivalry

It’s always a compelling battle when the Kings and St. Louis Blues share the same ice.

This is a series that has been dominated by Los Angeles in recent years – if not overall – since both teams entered the NHL in 1967-68.

The Kings are 16-4-0 in the last 20 regular season and playoff games between the clubs. They’ve have won the regular season series in each of the last three years and eliminated the Blues from the playoffs in both 2012 and 2013. A far cry from the cities’ baseball rivalry, the last St. Louis win in Downtown L.A. came on March 17, 2011.

But the head-to-head records of the season series don’t tell the full story of the playoff-hardened rivals. Each game between the clubs is highly competitive, and given that both teams get up and down the ice well and have top players known for their high-quality 200-foot games, there’s often good hockey on display.

“I think they’re one of the better teams,” Dustin Brown said. “They’re big and they can skate really well. When you have those two, they take up a lot of space. They’re a pretty disciplined hockey club from top to bottom. It’s one of those [games] where we know what to expect. It’s a hard game.”

In a discussion with Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch yesterday, Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said that the two teams have evolved to “more puck possession.” He’s not expecting as physical or intense of a series as when the ice became a battleground during the first round series between the teams in 2013. As Rutherford noted, Los Angeles and St. Louis combined for 479 hits in the series the Kings won, 4-2.

“I can’t really speak for them,” Brown said. “I think we’re physical when we need to be physical. When I say ‘physical,’ it’s not just about body checks. It’s about strong sticks and getting under sticks and that sort of thing. I think the less hits that we have, is essentially a result of us having the puck more and taking care of the puck better.”

Darryl Sutter also articulated the evolution of the rivalry, nothing that “both teams probably have a higher skill set than they did at that time.”

“Both teams have moved towards, for sure, more of a four-line team,” Sutter said.

While meeting with reporters, Sutter also indirectly answered an earlier question about whether the 2012 series between the teams provided a good glimpse of the skill sets of Jordan Nolan and Dwight King, both of whom were important factors in the Kings’ four-game sweep.

“Probably the reason you’re asking about that…is because those guys were looked on as third or fourth line guys. Well, they still are,” Sutter said. “You can’t differentiate a lot of times between who’s what. That’s how they are. If I look at St. Louis, I look at a guy like Steve Ott. Well, Steve Ott probably can play on any line, but where is he? They’re good teams. If we had lost that series, we’d still say it was a good series. And I go back to last year, when we were banged up and missing guys, and we had a game where our goaltending was way below average – they beat us five-cob. Well, quietly everyone was talking about our goalie, who didn’t have a very good night. Hey, you know what? They’ve turned it over to Brian Elliott. We’re playing them tonight, but I like their team.”

For the record, Nolan denied that the previous series represented any type of a “welcome to the NHL moment.”

“It was definitely an intense series and it’s something that’s ongoing every time we play them,” he said. said. “It always seems like it’s a lot of energy in the game, a lot of pushing and just a lot of battles out there.”