The Los Angeles Kings needed a late goal from Marian Gaborik on the power play to force extra time with the Montreal Canadiens Thursday night. Then they needed a shootout goal from Anze Kopitar to seal a 4-3 win over the Habs.
“We know what we need to do,” Gaborik said. “We need to take it game-by-game and period-after-period. We know what our goal is, and we want to keep climbing.”
Anze Kopitar’s SO goal wins it for Kings over Habs – file photo by Jack Lima
It was his second goal of the game that got the teams back to even with 45 seconds left in regulation.
The four-round shootout was full of goals as Dustin Tokarski, took the loss, stopping one of four LA shooters.
“You let three out of four [goals go] in the shootout, you never did your job,” Tokarski said. “Obviously I’d like to battle it out and make one or two of those.”
Gaborik opened and closed the scoring in regulation with power play goals; his first came at 4:02 of the first.
“We haven’t played a shootout game for a while,” Gaborik said. “I don’t know. There was a sense of confidence that we could do it. We’re fortunate we did. They could have pulled it off earlier, but two points come and we just have to get the next one.”
Kings’ head coach Darryl Sutter had a different take on the issue of “must win” after the game.
“If you’re a Canadian, everybody’s looking at the standings,” Sutter said. “I’m a Canadian, so I’m looking at them.
“There’s no ‘must. You don’t have to do anything. Try and win. There’s no such thing as a must-win. Nobody gets locked up or thrown in the ocean. It’s just a game.”
Now get fans and ownership groups to buy into that philosophy.
Jeff Carter scored his 22nd of the season in the regulation for the Kings and Jonathan Quick made 15 saves for the win.
“It’s not a good result at all,” the Habs’ Max Pacioretty said. “We had that game in the bag, and we were playing the right way. Then we obviously let it slip, and that is a frustrating feeling. We’ve got to find ways to close out games, especially against an opponent like that, who has had success of late.”
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