Ovie's lack of impact

The Kings’ attention now goes forward, to San Jose, but it’s worth taking one last look back at the Washington game and, in particular, the way the Kings handled Alex Ovechkin. The Capitals’ star had seven shots on goal, which is nothing new for him, but the difference was the Kings’ ability to prevent Ovechkin from getting quality scoring chances. There were a couple, but for the most part, the Kings — Drew Doughty and Rob Scuderi, in particular — did a good job of keeping Ovechkin under wraps.

Here’s what Terry Murray said today, when it was suggested to him that the Kings’ defensemen did a good job of keeping Ovechkin out of prime scoring areas…

MURRAY: “They did. Body positioning, especially at the end of the game. You go right to the final, goalie-out kind of scenario. The players that are out against him…he’s on the left D, in his favorite shooting place, and the players who were out against him really had good gap, good awareness to him.

“You almost, in that kind of look, break away totally from your concept of that home-plate attitude. You have to get right out in front of him. Before the lockout, when I had a player like that, that you were defending, I’d tell our defending player to put the stick between his legs and stand there with him. Mario Lemieux, Pavel Bure, those guys who were always such a great threat. We had that kind of awareness to it last night, so I was very pleased overall.”