Facing a stronger opponent, Kings’ purpose shouldn’t waver

By Dustin Brown’s account, he looks at the standings “every day.”

He’s aware that with 72 points, the Kings are tied with the San Jose Sharks (who have played two more games) and Calgary Flames for the final Pacific Division playoff spot.

He’s also aware that tonight’s opponent, the Montreal Canadiens, have 41 more points than their previous opponents, the Edmonton Oilers. While there’s a major discrepancy in talent between the back-to-back foes, it doesn’t affect much of the team’s purpose with so little margin for error between now and the end of the regular season.

“Every game is a reset,” Brown said. “Quite honestly, for this time of year, you need to be worrying about your own game individually and collectively as a team because regardless of who you’re playing, you need your game to make the playoffs. Sometimes down the stretch you’ll be playing playoff teams, sometimes you won’t be. But your game has to be in order if you want to be there at the end.”

While Los Angeles’ emerged with a three-goal road win (admittedly against an overmatched opponent) Tuesday night, there were still aspects of the performance that left the team with a sour taste in its mouth.

“We played well in the first period in Edmonton and then I think we let our foot off the gas and we didn’t really play our game, to be honest,” Jarret Stoll said. “We can’t afford to do that against these teams. They’re good Eastern Conference teams with a lot of skill, a lot of offense. They possess the puck well, the move the puck well. And for us, it’s no secret again, do a good job of checking, defensively being quick below the goal line, playing the game in their zone, coming north with it as much as possible. If we don’t do that, we’ll be in our own zone a lot and that’s not going to be very good.”

Tonight, they’ll face a Canadiens team that will be playing its third game in four nights after a cross-continent trip but will still be banking on Hart and Vezina Trophy candidate Carey Price – most likely, anyways. Montreal has not named its starting goalie, though there’s a good chance Price will still get the nod after dropping games in San Jose and Anaheim. The 27-year-old was phenomenal when stopping 44 of 46 shots in a 6-2 Canadiens win at Bell Centre in December, a game that the Kings dominated in puck possession metrics and scoring chances.

“They had a hot goalie in the first period and that kept them in the game, and then I think we got a little frustrated and got away from it,” Jake Muzzin said. “So it’s staying with the full 60 and we’ve seen that the other night in Anaheim where we played well for two periods and lose in the third. So putting together a full 60 is crucial at this time.”

Jake Muzzin, on how the Kings could improve from Tuesday’s win:
When you’re up so many goals, it’s tough to sometimes stay with the simple, hard plays that are the right plays to make. You want to maybe differ from the game plan and I thought we did a pretty good job actually at staying close to our game plan and not getting away from it too much. A couple breakdowns, but other than that it was a pretty solid game.

Muzzin, on whether there are challenges in adapting to two different opponents:
For sure. You don’t want to let their kind of style of game or the way they’re playing dictate how the game is going to be played. You want to play it how you want to – how we have to play to win. So you don’t kind of want their game to affect us. We want to play our game and have them reacting to what we do.