In Los Angeles, the Boston Bruins’ Jake DeBrusk scored his first career NHL hat trick, a natural, in a 7-0 thumping of the Kings on Monday night.
DeBrusk scored twice in the first period and once in the middle frame for his trick.
“I think it means that I have the attributes to do it, if that makes any sense? But this is the best league in the world, and it’s hard to do that every night,” DeBrusk said. “Even top guys on each team have off nights or off swings, or things like that. But I sure like it when things are going like this.”
Erik Haula hit for a pair of goals in the third period to round out the thrashing.
“We got a few breaks early on to get the lead on the road,” Boston coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We were pretty good at playing the right way, and now they’re chasing the game. I don’t know if they’re built to chase a lot of games from behind. That’s always an advantage, and then we started clicking a little bit. We were due for one of these nights where pucks go in the net.”
Boston improved to 32-17-4.
“As soon as you get two, you always want the third, and I was lucky enough to get it and help the team, put us up by three against a defensive team like L.A.,” DeBrusk said.
Jeremy Swayman made 34 saves in the shutout win.
“We’re upset,” Los Angeles’ Alex Iafallo said. “That’s a loss that we don’t want, to lose that big, obviously. We’re going to have to look at ourselves in the mirror and learn from our mistakes, but it was a good run.”
Taylor Hall and Patrice Bergeron scored single markers for the Bruins in the middle frame.
“Even the third period against the (New York) Islanders [in a 5-2 win on Saturday], I could see it start to creep in a little bit, and we knew it was around the corner,” Kings assistant Trent Yawney said. “I didn’t know if it was going to be tonight, but it was coming because we were getting away with some things that we weren’t getting away with earlier, but you end up with a win. Now we’ve just got to reset again and start all over.”
LA dropped to 29-18-7 after their five-game win streak was snapped.
Jonathan Quick got the start for LA, but given the hook in the second period after yielding five goals and making just 14 saves.
Cal Petersen made 11 saves in a mop up effort.
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