LOS ANGELES –The St. Louis Blues didn’t play a bad hockey game Saturday at the rink now known as Crypto.com Arena, but the Los Angeles Kings were just a little better.
Two late goals by L.A. we re the difference as the Blues couldn’t follow up on their impressive win Thursday in San Jose.
Gabriel Vilardi scored on a power play with 3:04 to play snapping a 2-2 tie and with 1:56 remaining Kevin Fiala scored an empty-netter to make it a 4-2 final.
The Kings took a 2-1 lead in the second period when Quinton Byfield flipped the puck high out of the neutral zone and into the St. Louis defensive zone. Those kinds of flips are normally pretty harmless, but in this instance, Adrian Kempe got behind Tyler Tucker and then flipped a high shot of his own past Jordan Binnington for his 29th goal. It came with 7:10 left in the period.
At one point in the period, LA had outshot St. Louis by a 16-3 margin. But one of the period’s best chances came when Kasperi Kapanen had a break-in shot stopped just four minutes in.
The Blues were on their heels early and yielded the game’s first goal when Carl Grundstrom crashed the net for his seventh goal of the season at the 3:14 mark. The Blues lost a puck battle along the wall despite outnumbering the Kings two to one, and Grundstrom made them pay.
But as the period progressed, the Blues started to take control. They couldn’t convert on two power plays, both coming on LA tripping penalties, but had plenty of chances and some of that momentum carried over.
Not long after the first power play ended, Jordan Kyrou clanged one off the post, so loudly that it probably could be heard in El Segundo. It deflected off the post and then off the skate of goalie Joonas Korpisalo and came to a full stop maybe a foot from the goal line. But a Kings player was able to clear out the puck before the Blues got there.
Korpisalo was making his Kings debut after Wednesday’s trade that sent Jonathan Quick (temporarily) to Columbus.
With 1:55 left in the opening period, Robert Thomas tied it at 1-1 with his 15th goal of the season. The rebound of Pavel Buchnevich shot got through Anze Kopitar at the net front and Thomas was there to bang in the rebound.
The primary assist by Buchnevich extended his point streak to five games since returning from a lower-body injury.
