LA Kings vs. Blues: Twitter breakdown, three stars, quotes in 3-0 win

Playing in his 1200th career game, Dustin Brown propelled the LA Kings to their fifth straight win, a 3-0 shutout over the Blues on Monday.

Putting their four-game winning streak and five-game point streak on the line, the LA Kings opened their two-game set with the first place St. Louis Blues on Monday night. The game marked Dustin Brown‘s 1200th of his career, and his performance seemed to match the milestone event.

The Kings and Blues imposed their physicality early on in the game, with Gabe Vilardi eventually getting the visitors on the board first — his fifth goal of the year and logging points in four consecutive games.

Prior to Vilardi’s goal, Jonathan Quick was on his A-game, making a couple of nice stops to keep the Blues off the scoreboard, foreshadowing the evening.

The Kings took a 1-0 goal into the first intermission, and they matched their intensity level in the second period, eventually adding another goal on a beautiful goal from Brown.

Leading 2-0 at the second intermission, the third period has been the LA Kings kryptonite in the early part of the season, but much like the first and second period, they continued to play aggressively through the first half of the period.

Grundstrom’s physicality continues to be a big element of his game, and I didn’t want this play to go unnoticed.

Like we said, Monday was more than just Brown’s 1200th game, sealing the game and 54th career shutout for Quick with an empty-net goal.

The LA Kings are playing really well right now, despite Jaret Anderson-Dolan missing from the lineup and a few players returning to the lineup, including Sean Walker. The 26-year-old played in his first game since taking a slapshot to the face from Wild defenseman Matt Dumba.

LA Kings Three Stars

3 stars

Dustin Brown: two goals, including the empty-netter

2 stars

Jonathan Quick: stopped all 29 shots he faced, earning his second shutout in his last three starts – probably deserved three stars.

1 star

Gabe Vilardi: one goal, including the game-winner, and has points in his last four games.

Postgame quotes

Brown on how not being on the PK has kept his legs fresher

Starting maybe middle last year, [I] stopped [penalty] killing. I mean, that’s a lot of not only a lot of minutes but a lot of minutes that just are quite honestly, hard and exhausting minutes to do. So maybe I’m a little fresher. I haven’t scored a goal maybe outside of 10 feet of the net. Getting there a lot more. Just more often and earlier in the shifts early and like I said, I’m fresher, so I can get there and battle.

Brown on having a pride factor knowing people have written him and Doughty off

Yeah, I mean, I don’t think it’s the first time people doubted players in this room. So it’s pride, I think, for sure. I think if you’re if not prideful, you’re probably still not playing the league. I think everyone has a little bit of that, you know, that’s like I said though, it’s more of a team collective right now than anybody. One guy or one group of guys, I think we’re playing a pretty solid game. We’re getting contributions from all four lines, and some guys are filling some roles. You look at our PK, we got guys that play a little further down our lineup, but they’re huge parts of our PK. It’s the little parts like that of a team that make it really hard to play against

McLellan on having both powerplay units being successful

Without a doubt, it can keep the opposition off balance. The second unit doesn’t mimic what the first unit does, and in certain situations, especially on breakouts and entry, so they do something different, and it’s valuable when they’re clicking tonight. Obviously, they got the winning goal. It was important for them to feel confident. I think we kept them out there a little longer than we would have normally, but they deserved that time.

McLellan on having Sean Walker back in the lineup

I thought he was a factor in the game. His legs were good. He will probably tell you [he] was a little rusty with the puck, a few points in the game where he could have made some plays, but we’re just happy to have about so much to our team. Getting him and Matt Roy back into our lineup makes a big difference. Now again, I said this, this doesn’t discount what some of the guys the young players did when they came up – Strand, Clague, and Toby, and Mikey Anderson, they all pitch in even Dermy [MacDermid] when he’s in the lineup, they did a really good job of playing, but getting those two back into the lineup, it just solidifies our back end a little bit more.

LA Kings Schedule

The Kings and Blues will finish up their two-game set on Wednesday, with puck drop set for 6:30 PT.