FINAL – Kings 1, Blues 4 – Kopitar, Edmundson, Hiller

The LA Kings dropped their third consecutive game as they fell by a 4-1 score against the St. Louis Blues on Saturday evening at Enterprise Center in Missouri.

Inside the game’s first four minutes, the Kings opened the scoring with a power-play goal, as forward Kevin Fiala extended his February scoring into the first game of March. Off a controlled zone entry, the Kings set up in the offensive zone with the extra man. Defenseman Drew Doughty fed Fiala, who teed up a one-timer from the right circle and beat St. Louis goaltender Jordan Binnington clean for his 24th goal of the season.

The Blues leveled the game just shy of halfway through the first period through defenseman Colton Parayko. After winning a faceoff to the right of Kings goaltender David Rittich, the hosts controlled the puck in the offensive end before forward Jordan Kyrou found Parayko to his left and the St. Louis defenseman shot first time, past Rittich on the blocker side, for his 15th goal of the season.

St. Louis took the lead just before the first intermission off a netmouth scramble at the top of the crease. Forward Jake Neighbours got his stick in just as Rittich dove to try and cover the puck, sparking a scrum in front of the net. The puck eventually fell to forward Pavel Buchnevich at the back post, where he scored his 13th goal of the season to put the hosts on top after 20 minutes of play by a 2-1 score.

Nearly 10 minutes into the second period, the Blues doubled their advantage with a hard-luck goal against for the Kings. Defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov had his shot blocked and the puck deflected high in the air, out of the zone, with St. Louis’ Zach Bolduc the only player on the ice to find it. On a breakaway, Bolduc elected to shoot and scored on the glove side for his ninth goal of the season and a two-goal advantage.

Inside the first two minutes of the third period, the Blues took a 4-1 lead, which would eventually hold up as the final score. Skating through the neutral zone, St. Louis forward Dylan Holloway let a wrist shot goal from the high slot, which Rittich got a piece of with the glove hand but could not keep out, as the Blues pulled ahead by three goals early in the final frame.

Hear from Kopitar, defenseman Joel Edmundson and Head Coach Jim Hiller following tonight’s game.

Joel Edmundson

Anze Kopitar
On his takeaways from tonight’s game
Yeah. I mean, obviously a quick turnaround from last night and everything, but that’s no excuse. We’ve just got to play better, we’ve got to play with a lot of emotions and everybody’s got to contribute more, me being on the very top of that list. I’ve got to lead the way and make sure that the team is ready and a lot more engaged than we were tonight.

On a frustrating few weeks for him personally
It’s definitely not been an easy span here, but just got to keep on plugging away. I guess the good part is we did get a few wins during that span, so that’s obviously good, but in order for us to go where we want to go, everybody’s got to be on top of that game and like I said, it’s me on top of that list.

On the team’s defensive play in tonight’s game and getting away from Kings hockey
We’ve been talking about it and giving up six last night and then four tonight, you’re not going to win very many games giving up four-plus goals. So, we’re going to have to tighten that up and make sure that the game in Chicago is obviously tighter and more Kings hockey.

On a bright spot of scoring on the power play after going 0-for-4 in Dallas
Power play hasn’t been good. It’s been a little bit better at home than on the road, so we’ve got to put an emphasis on that too and make sure, at the very least, it’s giving us momentum during games, but in order to win games, you’ve got to score goals.

Jim Hiller
On his takeaways from tonight’s defeat
We talked before the game about the power play, so we go out score a really nice power-play goal. I thought that gave us little energy early and then just too many mistakes and we let them back in. Once they got back into the game, I thought they started playing pretty well and we just didn’t have enough. We threw a lot of pucks to the net, we had bodies there, all that kind of stuff, but Binnington made saves and then we missed the net or they got blocked way too many times.

On the team’s defensive play tonight and getting away from Kings hockey
Yeah. Back to back and then you’re chasing a game that you want to stay ahead. Once you’ve got to chase them, they have a lot of offensive players now you get flat footed, you don’t have the same energy and it goes the other way and quickly. That’s what happened. Those are some bad chances, rush chances that we typically wouldn’t give up, but we’re chasing it. We had to lock it down when we had the 1-0 lead and clog it up at that point and we never did.

On the offensive chances tonight and lacking that incisive finish
On the handful of really good looks that we did have, Binnington made the save and then we probably had 30 throws from the blue line, where we had people in and around the net and we just didn’t find a stick or a skate. Those ones you can’t do too much, I thought we had decent traffic. Sometimes you just need to bounce on those ones, there was lots of bodies in front of the net.

On needing someone to make a play, whether it a goal, a pass or a save
Well, you’d like that. I think if you evaluate that game from our perspective, we didn’t make a lot of consecutive plays. We had opportunities to pull up, make a play, hit a trailer and we’re two feet in front of them or we’re two feet behind, whereas tonight, St Louis, I thought was really dangerous offensely, hold it up, pulled it across the line, sauce pass, sauce pass, chance. We didn’t have a high enough execution at all.

On the desperation St. Louis brought and Kopitar wanting to see that on Monday in Chicago
It’s a season where it goes up and down but when it goes down for a couple games, you’ve got to pull yourself out in a hurry. How do you do that? You got to say, well, it’s the beginning of March, still got lots of games, but we need to win and so there has to be a higher level of intensity, desperation, as he mentioned, for the game. You can’t manufacture that each and every game over 82, but now, you’ve got to pull that out and not just you, that whole entire team has to raise it for the next game.

Notes –
• Forward Kevin Fiala (1-0=1) scored his 24th goal of the season, his team-leading eighth of the year on the power play. The native of St. Gallen, Switzerland, ties Nino Niederreiter for the third most power play goals among skaters of Swiss nationality, each with 52 such markers.
• Defenseman Drew Doughty (0-1=1) contributed the primary assist on Fiala’s goal, his fourth assist of the season, extending his point streak against St. Louis to a seventh game (1-7=8), dating back to Oct. 31, 2022. Doughty’s now seven- game run is one of 12 such streaks of at least that length against the Blues in Kings history.
• Captain Anze Kopitar (0-1=1) notched his team-leading 34th assist of the campaign, the 826th of his career to surpass Hockey Hall of Famer Alex Delvecchio for sole possession of the 30th most in NHL history.
• Kopitar played in his 1,431st career regular season game, tying Scott Mellanby and Luc Robitaille for the 34th most games played in League history.
• Per NHL PR, Doughty and Kopitar factored on the same goal for the 306th time to match Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito for the third most by a forward-defenseman duo in League history. Only Wayne Gretzky and Paul Coffey (350) and Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang (307) have done so more times.

The Kings have a scheduled day off tomorrow, following the back-to-back. The team will return to the ice for morning skate on Monday, March 3, before taking on the Chicago Blackhawks that evening at United Center.