The view from St. Louis

Nothing good can last forever. The St. Louis Blues had been 4-0-2 under new coach Ken Hitchcock, and had yet to allow more than two regulation goals under his watch, but the Kings scored three times and recorded the regulation win. The Kings had been 2-8-0 in their previous 10 games at Scottrade Center. Here’s how the St. Louis Post-Dispatch covered last night’s game, followed by some additional postgame quotes from the Blues’ locker room, courtesy of The Associated Press…

Blues lose as power play fizzles

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COACH KEN HITCHCOCK
(on the game…) “I think the last two games in the last two periods, we’ve probably come off it a little bit in the third period. We’ve kind of been the team making a few mistakes. We’ve made a couple errors in our own end that have ended up in our net or ended up us taking a penalty to give the momentum back to the (opposing) team. It’s a frustrating loss for the players to battle back like we did and give it up so quickly. It’s a tough loss. … The difference for us was when we had all the chances in the second period and we couldn’t grab the lead. For me, that was disappointing.’’

(on the Blues tying the game in the third period…) “That last power play was very, very effective. I think it gave us momentum leading up to (Sobotka’s) goal. But when you’re scoring two goals a game, you’re living on a fine line. We’ve been on the right side of it for the most part. But we’re going to have to extend ourselves a little bit better if we expect to win.’’

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DAVID BACKES
(on Drew Doughty’s late cross-checking penalty…) “The end result is a two-minute penalty and a faceoff outside the zone. They might as well just run clock on that. I guess if that’s the extent of it, that’s a good way to kill the clock … no holds barred at the end of the game. But it can’t come down to the last three seconds. We should have been in better position, where it’s us closing out that game.”

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BARRET JACKMAN
(on his two turnovers that led to Kings goals…) “The first one on the (penalty kill), I just made a bad read with good players on the ice. I thought the play was in the middle, but obviously it wasn’t and they jumped on it and scored. The second one, the puck just bounced over my stick. It was going the wrong way and I couldn’t recover.’’