The Kings hit the road for the first time this season and found no shortage of bumps as inopportune turnovers condemned them to a 4-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues on Saturday at Enterprise Center.
“We gave up a goal off a faceoff that we should have no trouble handling, and then a poor break-out,” said Kings coach Todd McLellan, whose team also gave up a power-play goal and an empty-netter. “Both of those situations were ones that we should have been able to handle but we didn’t.”
Defensemen Torey Krug and Vince Dunn notched goals for the Blues, as did forward David Perron before Jayden Schwartz added an empty-net goal. Jordan Binnington had an effective albeit uneventful night in net, contributing 21 saves against 23 shots on goal.
Wingers Adrian Kempe and Dustin Brown scored for the Kings. Cal Petersen made his second start in goal and bore the brunt of the Kings’ bad bounces and poor passes, ceding three goals on 27 shots.
Petersen was shaken up early in the game after an awkward poke-check attempt led to his head colliding first with Kings defenseman Drew Doughty and then with Perron.
He stayed in the game and made a powerful cross-crease save on forward Jordan Kyrou eight minutes into the contest. He also denied defenseman Justin Faulk off another prime chance in transition.
Yet the Kings were hindered once more by a penalty, a familiar experience for them after they averaged more than five penalties per game in their four-game home stand to open the season. Overall, the Kings came out on the plus-side, taking three fewer penalties than the Blues with each team scoring one power-play goal.
Petersen fended off the initial man-advantage advance, but the Blues regrouped and moved the puck purposefully to Krug high in the zone. Krug blasted the puck as he fell to the ice and it zoomed through traffic to beat Petersen between his glove and his right pad 13:12 into the game.
Petersen also made stops on forwards Robert Thomas and Mike Hoffman in succession in the final minute of the first frame. The Kings were out-shot 13-5 in a period that saw their puck management and checking deteriorate as time progressed.
The Kings drew even in the first minute of the second period as they secured the puck off an offensive-zone faceoff, moved it to Alex Iafallo on the left wing wall and into the high slot for a Kempe one-timer. It was Kempe’s third straight game with a goal.
St. Louis regained the lead for good less than two minutes later..
The Kings won a defensive zone draw but a turnover by defenseman Kurtis MacDermid put the Blues on the attack. They moved the puck to Dunn in a position similar to where Krug scored from in the first period. His rising wrist shot darted through the congestion in front of the net and over Petersen’s glove to put the Blues up 2-1.
Defenseman Matt Roy lost control of the puck in his own end and St. Louis again made the Kings pay. Perron slipped the puck to Thomas whose firm pass back to Perron set up the veteran forward’s first goal of 2021 to make it 3-1.
“It wasn’t those plays that are just bonehead plays … We just didn’t handle the puck very well,” McLellan said. “As a result, we were caught in between: stops, starts, wasting shifts.”
For the second straight game, a 5-on-3 power play opportunity invigorated the Kings. With 3:31 to play in the second period, Brown tapped in a pass on the backdoor from Kopitar to make it 3-2. As he did in their previous game against Colorado on an even-strength goal, Kopitar drew the defense to him, this time by gliding toward the net, and then lifted a picturesque saucer pass across to Brown.
The Kings converted just one of eight such two-man advantage opportunities last season, but are two-for-two early in this campaign.
It was Kopitar’s NHL-leading seventh assist, and it came on a night when he moved into sole possession of third place for most career games played as a King.
“A really good term: security blanket. For me, he’s an extension of the staff,” McLellan said of the Kings’ captain. “Through his work ethic, not so much through his words, just through how he does things, he provides great leadership for the group.”
St. Louis out-shot the Kings 13-5 in the first period and were still doubling them up at one point in the second. Though they narrowed that gap, the Kings failed to generate meaningful offense in the third and spent significant chunks of time in their own zone while trailing.
“(St. Louis is) not a team you want to come from behind against,” McLellan said. “This team can lock it down, is very comfortable playing with a lead. They give up very few chances and defend well.”
The Blues, who surrendered a whopping five power-play goals against Colorado earlier this season, took a late penalty, their fifth of the game.
But the Kings failed to convert in the final three minutes, first with a five-on-four power play, then with six-on-four and six-on-five advantages once they pulled Petersen from his goal.
“In the third period they kind of took it to us,” Roy said.
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