Well, the Los Angeles Kings are not nearly as cooked as once thought. On Friday night, the Kings managed a convincing 4-1 win over the Blues in St Louis.
“It was a good hockey game. It was back-to-back against two really good teams that play hard and play heavy games,” LA head coach John Stevens said. “I thought the guys really dug in tonight. Got a great performance from your goaltender and we had some real quality looks. We continued to get better as the game wore on. I thought we 
got good contributions from everybody.”
Darcy Kuemper got the start in net and made 39 saves as LA pushed their current win streak to four games and improved to 16-8-3.
“I was excited to get the opportunity to play against St. Louis,” Kuemper said. “You don’t always get those opportunities so I was excited when I found about it and I think our whole team was and really got up for it and wanted to prove something out there.”
Tyler Toffoli led the offense with two strikes in the win.
“I think we just had a really good start and we know how it feels when you kind of get into a hole early in games,” Toffoli said. “And we did a good job of doing that and we were ready to play tonight.”
Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe also scored for LA who had been mired in a dismal stretch of games prior to the current streak.
“I thought tonight we were pretty easy to play against. Especially in our building, we should be playing the body, making it tough on them to exit their zone, but they were breaking out the puck way too easy tonight. That’s the result we’re going to get. We’ve got to spend more time in their zone.” St Louis’ Joel Edmundson said after the loss.
Patrik Berglund scored the lone goal for the Blues as they have lost two straight and were only 2-3-0 on their five-game homestand.
“This is, I would say, the first time this year … we’ve lost a couple games in a row before, but this is the first time I would say where we weren’t right,” Blues head coach Mike Yeo said. “We weren’t right to start the game and certainly we didn’t find it along the way.”
[WATCH: All Kings vs. Blues highlights]
Carter Hutton got the start for the Blues but was given the hook after the second intermission; he made 18 saves
“Obviously down 2-0 right away there quickly. It’s obviously a tough start when you get in a hole like that,” Hutton said. “… Obviously the third one’s a bad one and that ended my night.”
Jake Allen mopped up in the third period and made six stops.
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