Kings Storm Past Blues at BetLM

Kings Storm Past Blues

ST. LOUIS – An evening that began with tor­nado warn­ings, 100 km-h wind gusts and egg-sized hail in St. Louis didn’t set­tle down much when the puck dropped.

The fired up Blues stormed Los Ange­les like they were the Edmund Fitzger­ald, fir­ing about six shots on net before the anthem singer was even off the ice, but the Kings weath­ered the fran­tic early moments, launched a counter-attack of their own and rained all over the home town parade.

The Cal­i­for­nia giant killers, after dis­patch­ing the No.1 team in the West­ern Con­fer­ence last round, have stolen home ice advan­tage from No.2 in this one, post­ing a 3–1 series open­ing vic­tory at the Scot­trade Centre.

“It’s just hard work,” said LA cap­tain Dustin Brown, after the Kings posted their sixth con­sec­u­tive road play­off vic­tory dat­ing back to last sea­son. “Our PK was big tonight, our 5-on-5 was big and we got a cou­ple of big saves, espe­cially early. Our goalie really helped us weather that early storm.”

So the Blues, who were 30–6-5 at home this year, will now have to play catch up.

“The first period is exactly what we needed, we played a great first period,” said Blues coach Ken Hitch­cock, whose club scored first and threat­ened to run away with things. “Then we kind of exited the game after that.

“When you play LA there’s a price to pay to win. There’s a high price. If we expect to win the next game we’re going to have to pay a big­ger price than the one we paid.”

The Blues were fero­cious at the start and looked like they were try­ing to end this thing early, and might have, too, had it not been for the valiant work of net­min­der Jonathan Quick. He sim­ply refused to let the game get away from them.

“They’re one of the best teams in the league on home ice for a rea­son and that first 10 min­utes shows you why,” said Quick. “They put us on our heels, but you need your goalie to make a cou­ple of saves for you on the road, it’s some­thing that you kind of expect to do, you feel you need to do it.”

It was 1–1 late in the sec­ond on goals from Slava Voynov and David Per­ron when a St. Louis power play that had been so good for them against San Jose, (6-for-18) let them down in a big way. After going 0-for-2 on its first two chances, it gave up a short­handed goal to stay at home defence­man Greene to trail 2–1 at the sec­ond intermission.

“I was a bit sur­prised when I turned around and Greene was cel­e­brat­ing behind the net,” said Brown. “We’re short­handed and Greener hardly even jumps up five-on-five.”

“I took a chance,” said Greene, whose shocker was just the sec­ond short­handed goal by a defence­man in Kings play­off his­tory. “And the puck was just lay­ing there. Its’ def­i­nitely a great feel­ing to be able to chip in and help out.”

The sequence was doubly-bad for St. Louis as the power play came on a board­ing penalty to King that knocked Pietrangelo from the game.

He’s out with what looks like a con­cus­sion issue, but the Blues won’t make a diag­no­sis till Sunday.

Bad news all around. But the Blues lost Game 1 of their last series, too, and it worked out OK, so there is no sense of panic in the room.

“Per­son­ally, I feel that we didn’t play any­where close to where we can play,” said McDon­ald. “We had a good first period and that was it. Not to take any­thing away from them, they play hard and they have a good team, but I feel we have a lot more.

“I don’t think any­body in here is wor­ried or down about our chances, we just have to get rested up and make improvements.”

Fol­low me on TWITTER.com/SUN_TYCHKOWSKI

ROBERT.TYCHKOWSKI@Sunmedia.ca

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