Troy Brouwer scored in the seventh round of the shootout to give the St. Louis Blues a 2-1 win against the Los Angeles Kings at Staples Center. Alexander Steen scored in the first round of the tiebreaker, and Marian Gaborik matched him by scoring to start the third round. Brouwer ended the game four rounds later by snapping a shot over the glove of Kings' goaltender Jonathan Quick.
Alex Pietrangelo scored and goaltender Brian Elliott made 26 saves through overtime and six more in the shootout for the Blues, who ended a five-game losing streak. St. Louis has gone past regulation in each of its past four games; the Blues lost the first three, including 4-3 in a shootout at the Anaheim Ducks on Friday. After a stretch where the Blues said their play was trending upward without a win to show for it, this one felt like a reward.
Anze Kopitar scored in the second period and Quick made 15 saves for the Kings, who lost for the second time in their past eight games. Quick has allowed one goal in regulation in each of his past four starts. Kopitar opened the scoring at 9:54 of the second period when he took a pass off the boards from Milan Lucic and beat Elliott with a backhand shot.
Pietrangelo tied it 2:39 later when he went top shelf over Quick with a wrist shot from the left faceoff dot. The Kings had to kill a five-minute power when Brayden McNabb was assessed a major for charging and a game misconduct at 7:59 of the third period after a hit that resulted in an injury to Magnus Paajarvi.
Jeff Carter had the best scoring chance during the long power play, but Elliott stopped him on a breakaway.
Earlier in the game, Carl Gunnarsson left with an upper-body injury and didn't return. The Blues were already without Jay Bouwmeester, Paul Stastny and goaltender Jake Allen, each of whom was injured in the game at Anaheim.
Despite the losses to injury, the Blues went 1-0-1 on back-to-back nights in Southern California. Hitchcock had no updates on either player following the game. The Blues are off until they host the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday. The Kings host the Detroit Red Wings on Monday.
Blues Quotes
Ken Hitchcock: "It's four games in a row now that we have really dug in. You get into overtime or extra time and you are going to win some and lose some. We now have played really well for four or five games in a row. We just have to keep it going. We'll let you know Monday after practice on everybody. That part has been a tough weekend for us."David Backes: "We've put a lot of work in and a lot of effort in. Now we've found that second point and it feels like a good reward for a great effort against a team that was rested and really came at us hard. We responded really well."
"We know we're going to have to shoulder the load and have responsibility on different guys. We need to bind together and stick up for each other and make sure we have a good concerted team effort. We did a good job of that."
Alex Pietrangelo: "It's never easy to lose guys. But I'm pretty proud of the way, last night, the forwards stepped up after losing Jay and Paul and then tonight, again the D all chipped in."
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