LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jonathan Quick and the Los Angeles Kings are going into their 11-day break with a bit of momentum.
The Kings rallied for a 4-3 victory over the St. Louis Blues on Monday and are 3-1-1 in their last five games. Quick stopped 33 shots to earn his 302nd NHL victory, which is fourth-best among U.S.-born goaltenders.
Quick passed Mike Richter, the longtime New York Ranger whom he followed as a kid in Milford, Connecticut.
“It’s a cool milestone but we’re just trying to get back in the playoff race,” said Quick, who was the second-fastest American goalie to reach 300 wins.
The game was tied at 3 before Paul LaDue scored midway through the third period. The defenseman, who was playing in only his 15th game this season and first since Dec. 29, snapped a wrist shot from the right faceoff circle past Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington for his second goal of the season.
It was only the second time this season and first since Oct. 28 against the Rangers that the Kings have won after trailing by two goals.
“Maybe not the start that we wanted, but we battled back,” said Anze Kopitar, who had a goal and an assist. “I mean even the first period we were down, but we generated quite a few chances, just couldn’t connect on them. But we stuck with it and at the end of the day got the job done.”
Tyler Toffoli had a goal and an assist while Brendan Leipsic had two assists. Drew Doughty also scored for Los Angeles, which is 2-0 against St. Louis this season.
Mackenzie MacEachern, Oskar Sundqvist and Ryan O’Reilly scored for St. Louis, which had won seven of its previous 11 road games. Alex Pietrangelo and Ivan Barbashev both had two assists, and Binnington made 25 saves.
“They played a good game. But we just made too many mistakes that cost us,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said.
MacEachern scored his first NHL goal when he knocked in a rebound of Vince Dunn’s slap shot while falling to the ice at 10:31 of the first period.
Sundqvist put the Blues up 2-0 when he took a pass from Barbashev and lofted it past Quick’s stick with 1:11 left in the period. Los Angeles got a goal 15 seconds later when Leipsic picked off an errant pass from Barbashev in the Blues zone and then passed between two St. Louis skaters to an open Toffoli.
Doughty tied it at 2 at 7:15 of the second on a 5-on-3 power play when he directed a slap shot from just outside the faceoff circle past Binnington. Kopitar gave the Kings a 3-2 advantage late in the period with his team-leading 14th goal of the season off a pass from Dustin Brown on a 2-on-1 rush.
O’Reilly — who leads the Blues with 18 goals — tied it six minutes into the third on the power play when his shot from the right faceoff circle went over Quick’s glove and just under the crossbar.
NOTES: Doughty has a point in three straight games (one goal, two assists). … Kopitar has a point in five straight against the Blues (three goals, four assists). … It was the second straight game that the Kings have scored on a two-man advantage. Ilya Kovalchuk scored Los Angeles’ lone goal on Saturday at Colorado on a 5-on-3 power play. … The Kings sent forward Matt Luff down to Ontario of the AHL before the game. … O’Reilly extended his points streak to five games (two goals, five assists) and has 20 points in his last 19 games (six goals, 14 assists). … Pietrangelo has seven points in his last six games against the Kings (one goal, six assists).
UP NEXT
Blues: Travel to Anaheim on Wednesday for their final game before the All-Star break.
Kings: Won’t play again until Feb. 2, when they face the New York Islanders to begin a six-game trip.
Photo credit – Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press / Los Angeles, CA
