ST. LOUIS — Anze Kopitar had a goal and two assists to help the Los Angeles Kings to their first road win of the season, 6-3 against the St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center on Sunday.
Adrian Kempe had two assists, and Jonathan Quick made 28 saves for the Kings (2-2-2), who split a two-game set here. They lost 4-2 on Saturday.
“I think we came out with a little bit more authority that first period,” said Kopitar, the Los Angeles captain. “Even though we didn’t score a whole lot of goals, it was probably one of the best periods that we played. Being aggressive, being on top of pucks and shooting the puck too. Second period, the floodgates kind of opened up for us, and the third, we’ll work on it.”
Brayden Schenn scored twice, Jordan Kyrou had two assists, and Ville Husso made 29 saves in his first NHL start for the Blues (3-2-1), who allowed five unanswered goals after taking a 1-0 lead.
“[We] turned over pucks, thought we’d go east-west with it and gave them opportunities and chances and odd-man rushes, and we know as a group we can’t play that style of hockey,” Schenn said of St. Louis getting outscored 3-0 in the second period. “That’s not how you win hockey games, and [we] got away from our game for 25 minutes of that hockey game, 30 minutes of that hockey game, and it was 5-1 before we knew it.”
Gabriel Vilardi extended Los Angeles’ lead to 3-1 at 6:25 of the second following a turnover by St. Louis defenseman Vince Dunn in the neutral zone.
Kopitar scored his first goal of the season when he tipped in Kempe’s shot to make it 4-1 at 8:22.
Lias Andersson scored on a breakaway to make it 5-1 at 17:18.
“I would say without a doubt, all three zones were solid,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “We were skating. There was a tenacity to us. We were responsible. I thought this was the first time we took the game to a team rather than receiving it.”
St. Louis scored two goals in 48 seconds to cut the Los Angeles lead to two. Schenn’s second of the game made it 5-2 at 6:01 of the third period, and Ryan O’Reilly scored from the point to pull the Blues within 5-3 at 6:49.
“We needed to come out and respond and get to our game, but I think we’re overthinking it and we get caught on our heels,” said O’Reilly, the Blues captain. “You can just kind of see it. It feels like every bounce goes their way and we’re creating those bounces going against us because we’ve overthinking and we’re not going and just trusting ourselves. That’s what happens and you can see in the third period when we do kind of trust each other and we just go, go, go, bounces start to come our way and there’s chances and we have a push. It’s disappointing, it’s the thing we’ve been struggling with the whole season so far. It’s obviously a concern. We have to find a way to do that.”
Drew Doughty scored into an empty net from the opposite end boards with 17 seconds remaining for the 6-3 final.
Schenn had given St. Louis a 1-0 lead at 14:26 of the first on a wrist shot from the left face-off circle.
Los Angeles scored twice in 23 seconds to take the lead. Alex Iafallo‘s power-play goal tied it 1-1 at 18:13, and Carl Grundstrom made it 2-1 on the rush at 18:36.
“We were much better in our end, which allowed us to get on the forecheck,” McLellan said. “The pieces were all working together.”
NOTES: Kopitar has scored 54 points (16 goals, 38 assists) in 49 games against the Blues. … Goalie Jordan Binnington had started the first five games for St. Louis.
