Los Angeles Kings backup goalie Jhonas Enroth made 24 saves for his sixth NHL shutout, and Jeff Carter's power play-goal was the difference in a 3-0 victory against the St. Louis Blues at Scottrade Center. Playing a man short for most of the game and on the second of back-to-back games, Enroth got his first shutout with the Kings. He has allowed one goal in two starts. The Kings lost center Anze Kopitar for the final two periods after he sustained an upper-body injury.
Kopitar was hit in the head by Blues forward Ryan Reaves but finished the period. Sutter was impressed by his team's showing on the second night of back-to-back games. The Kings were defeated by the Chicago Blackhawks 4-2 on Monday.
Carter scored a power-play goal, his eighth point in seven games, during a 4-on-3 man-advantage. He took a Drew Doughty pass to the right of Jake Allen, got him to slightly cheat off the right post and put a shot past the Allen with 4:08 remaining in the second period. Doughty's has six assists in five games.
Carter and Tanner Pearson each had a goal and an assist, and Trevor Lewis scored in the third period for the Kings, who have won eight of nine. Los Angeles had their seven-game winning streak end on Monday. The Blues, who play at the Blackhawks on Wednesday, concluded a five-game home stand 3-1-1; Allen made 31 saves. Playing with several key players out of the lineup because of injury, the Blues said they had to play a simplified game on order to have success, but that didn't happen. The Blues tied a season-low with 24 shots on goal and didn't have much traffic in front of Enroth. Pearson scored with 4:33 remaining in the third off a 4-on-2 rush. He took a feed from Brayden McNabb and beat Allen high short side. Lewis' empty-netter with 45 seconds remaining sealed the win.
Blues Quotes
Ken Hitchcock: "We didn't play the way we needed to collectively play. We have one line [Alexander Steen, Jori Lehtera and Vladimir Tarasenko] that for me should have the freedom to play the right way but have the green light to be creative. They can make plays; everybody else should be in in straight lines and we weren't in straight lines and they took advantage of it. We took penalties that took any momentum that we had that we earned; we took it away on penalties early in the first period and they played at a tempo ... we got some good stuff going in the second, but they played at a tempo that we struggled to keep up to. It was an eye-opener for a lot of people."Alex Pietrangelo: "They played last night, but a team that can roll four lines like they did certainly, just like us, it's an advantage. I thought we had some pretty good looks. I thought [Enroth] made some pretty good saves too. But a couple bounces go in, different game. I thought we turned the puck over a little too much going into those situations."
Opposition View
Jhonas Enroth: "It's a really good feeling. Obviously you want to play as many games as you can, but we have a pretty good starter here [in Jonathan Quick]. You've just got to be sharp when you get your chance and try to steal as many points as you can. ... I'm really here to try to stop every puck I can."Darryl Sutter: "I talked to him after. He's just feeling better, so that's good. I thought we had really good purpose to our game right from the start and played the whole game, played a complete game. I think [Enroth] showed a lot of composure and made the timely saves. I'm not sure how much work he had, but he made timely saves."
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