The view from St. Louis

Only 300 miles of highway separate St. Louis from Chicago, and that’s certainly not the path to victory for the Kings. The Kings have 26 regulation losses this season, and eight of them have come at the hands of the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks. The Kings went 0-4 and were unable to solve goalie Jaroslav Halak, who allowed them a total of three goals in three games. More to the point, the Kings couldn’t even generate much pressure against Halak last night. Here’s a game-flavored blog item from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is below, followed by some additional quotes from the Blues’ locker room…

Blues inflict great Payne on Kings

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COACH DAVIS PAYNE
(on the game…) “One thing we’ve taken a lot of pride in this year is our back-to-back performance. Playing on consecutive nights, our record has been pretty decent in that area. But from a standpoint of executing and the details of the game, making sure the puck is in the right spot, making sure we kept things to the outside and making sure we created our own opportunity to attack from defensive play was something we talked about. The detail areas of blocking shots and getting in the right spots with the sticks and the passing lanes, knowing that we’re playing a very skilled hockey team, is important. But you have to skate to do it and they skated well tonight.”

(on Jaroslav Halak’s shutout…) “He forced some pucks wide, and obviously the save on the breakaway in the second period, a huge, huge save for us. There were some moments there where they had pressure around our net and he was big, he was at the top of his crease, he was challenging… … L.A. was applying some pressure and he made some guys miss. He also made some big saves.”

(on Shattenkirk and Stewart fitting in…) “I think both guys have come as billed. Shattenkirk’s a real smart, heady player, and the ability to play on the power play and create situations coming out of his own zone, great vision, great passing, certainly exactly what we thought we’d get. Stewie [Chris Stewart] is just obviously a big body, but scoring a number of different ways and we want to make sure he continues to grow so it’s not just an offensive situation that he can play. He had a tough match-up tonight and I thought he handled himself very well on the defensive side of things.”

CHRIS STEWART
(on the outnumbered attack in second period…) “I was backtracking and then I saw the turnover and I got off the ice and saw the 4-on-1 there and Quick [Jonathan Quick] made a hell of a save, getting his paddle down there and then it went back on a breakaway to Ponikarovsky and Halak came big. He’s been the backbone of the team all year and if they had scored that goal it would have been a different game.”