FINAL – Kings 2, Blues 3 (SO) – Byfield, Kuemper, Hiller

The LA Kings collected a point on home ice but dropped their fifth consecutive game in total, as they fell by a 3-2 margin in a shootout against the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

After nearly 19 minutes of hockey without a goal, St. Louis opened the scoring late in the first period. After the puck slipped past Kings defenseman Joel Edmundson on a neutral-zone pinch up the left wall, the Blues went the other way on a 2-on-1 rush. Forward Jake Neighbours kept the puck himself, deked to the backhand and place this shot over the shoulder of Kings goaltender Darcy Kuemper for a 1-0 lead.

The response for the Kings took just 32 seconds, however, as forward Quinton Byfield tied the game at one heading into the first intermission. After taking a feed from forward Kevin Fiala, Byfield curled in the left-hand circle and fired through a screen in front of Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington, into the top corner on the glove side, for his 12th goal of the season and a 1-1 score after 20 minutes of play.

Midway through the second period, the Kings took their first lead of the game, with forward Trevor Moore cashing in with his 12th goal of the season. Seconds after Moore nearly set up linemate Warren Foegele in front of the net, he got rewarded from a sharp angle, as he worked the puck over the line while standing below the goal line, as the Kings pulled ahead by a goal.

On their fourth power-play chance of the game, St. Louis finally converted, as they tied the game at two heading into the second intermission. On the man advantage, forward Robert Thomas unloaded a shot from the left-hand circle, past Kuemper for his 17th goal of the season. Forward Pavel Buchnevich and defenseman Cam Fowler tallied the assists on the play, which knotted the score at 2-2.

After both the third period and overtime came and went without a goal, the game progressed into the shootout where St. Louis collected the extra points as it scored on two of three attempts, compared to one Kevin Fiala goal for the Kings.

Hear from Byfield, Kuemper and Head Coach Jim Hiller following tonight’s game.

Quinton Byfield

Darcy Kuemper
On collecting a point at home coming off an 0-3-0 trip
Yeah, I mean tonight felt different, it felt more like how we want to play for most of the game there. It was a step in the right direction, but obviously that’s not the result we were looking for.

On the team’s defensive game tonight, cleaning things up after the roadtrip
I think that’s something we pride ourselves on. I think we made some good corrections in that area and it obviously kept us in a tight game that we just weren’t able to close up.

On the penalty-kill performance in tonight’s game
I thought it looked more like how we wanted to. It actually did for most of the road trip, it looked good again. You don’t want to be giving teams too many opportunities, that was probably the case with four in the first two periods, but I thought overall, we did a good job there.

On how he approaches shootout situations
I’m just trying to stop the puck. We haven’t had too many of them this year, so it’s kind of funny how those go sometimes. You get on a roll in them and then sometimes you don’t. I just go out there and try to face each shooter the same way.

Jim Hiller
On his assessment of tonight’s game overall
I thought it was good hockey game. For those of you who haven’t seen them yet, we saw them last week live, it’s a pretty good team who is playing really well. So, I thought it was a good game. We battled, both teams missed some pretty good chances, I thought both goaltenders played well. Then the shootout, they got us there.

On his level of worry or concern with the state of the team right now
We always want to be better. I don’t know if there’s one thing. It’s hard, it’s a challenging time for us and we’ve just got to keep going, sticking together. I didn’t like the penalties tonight. If there’s one that you want me to be concerned, to worry about one thing. With the Lewis penalty and Fiala’s penalty, both terrible penalties.

On scoring two or fewer goals in five straight games
We’d like to score more, for sure. We’ve talked about it, I talked about it this morning, we had a lot of chances in Chicago and we came up short. I thought the St Louis game we had a fair amount of chances too, to convert around the net. I won’t say it’s always going to be a challenge for us, but I think it’s 60 games in and we don’t score a ton, that’s obvious. If you’re not going to score a ton, you can’t give up much. I don’t think that trying to play a different way is going to help us score more. I think we generate kind of as a five-man unit. I don’t think there’s one guy that just goes out and leads that charge by himself, so that’s a team game on offense.

On Quinton Byfield’s game and impact tonight
I thought Q was really good, maybe our best player, I don’t know, we’ll have to look at it a lot closer than just standing there and catching it in real time, but he had the big hit, right? If you go back into Chicago, he had two big hits in that game, he took one too, but I think we’re starting to see him just dominate a little bit. He’s got to be a physical player because he has that attribute. Confidence, skating, I thought he handled the puck and then the 3-on-3, he was dangerous. It’s an evolution and I think we’re seeing some really good strides from him.

On the team’s execution on odd-man rushes and not getting enough shots on goal in those situations
They all develop a little bit differently. There’s so much timing and space and what do you have and lots of different things involved. In the end, the player has to make the best choice and execute. That’s not a coaching thing. Kevin will probably look at that, Q will look at that, they might talk after that, but they’re there in that moment. They see what they see and it just comes down to executing.

On his evaluation of Brandt Clarke’s game tonight
I thought he was good, I thought he had good intensity. Again, that’s a tough opponent there and yeah, I thought he was really good. It was a really good step for him.

Notes –
• Forward Quinton Byfield (1-0=1) scored his 12th goal of the campaign to extend his home point streak to a third game (1-5=6), dating back to Feb. 24 vs. Vegas Byfield’s goal marks his 20th point scored at Crypto.com Arena this season (6- 14=20), the fourth most amongst Kings skaters this season.
• Byfield recorded five hits tonight, tying a single-game career high that was set on March 16, 2024 at DAL.
• Forward Trevor Moore (1-0=1) scored his 12th goal of the season, his 50th career goal scored on home ice. Moore becomes the 22nd undrafted skater of American nationality to score 50 home-ice goals, and just the fourth California-born skater of any draft status to do so, joining Auston Matthews (213), Jason Zucker (106) and Jason Robertson (87).
• Forward Kevin Fiala (0-1=1) recorded his 16th assist of the season to reach the 40-point mark (24-16=40) for the sixth-straight campaign. With the assist, Fiala extends his home point streak against the Blues to a seventh game (5-7=12), dating back to April 29, 2021 (with MIN).
• The assist clinched Fiala’s seventh 40-point season in his career, the second most such seasons amongst Swiss-born skaters in League history, behind only Nashville’s Roman Josi (10x).
• Defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov (0-1=1) notched his 18th assist of the season, the 99th helper of his NHL career. Gavrikov sits one assist shy of becoming the eighth defenseman selected in the 2015 NHL Draft to reach 100 career assists.
• Defenseman Mikey Anderson (0-1=1) collected his 11th helper of the season for his 58th career assist, tying Vancouver’s Carson Soucy for the third highest total amongst active defensemen to play their college hockey at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
• Forward Warren Foegele (0-1=1) collected his 16th assist of the season to extend his home point streak to three games (2-2=4) , his third such streak this season. Foegele (99A) sits a single helper shy of 100 career assists through 491 games played in the NHL.
• Captain Anze Kopitar skated in his 1,433rd career regular season game tonight, breaking a tie with Mike Gartner (1,432 GP) for sole possession of the 33rd most games played in League history.

The Kings are scheduled to practice tomorrow at 11 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center.