In Edmonton Monday night, Cam Talbot picked up his second straight shutout with a 35-save effort in a 2-0 win over the Los Angeles Kings.
Patrick Maroon and Milan Lucic struck for the Oilers in the fist period and Edmonton improved to 39-24-9.
Cam Talbot picked up second straight shutout in win over LA – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
For Talbot it was his seventh shutout of the season.
“Cam has been great for us all year,” Edmonton’s Connor McDavid said. “For him to play like that in back-to-back games — two of the biggest games of the year for us — he was great.”
Maroon scored before two minutes had gone in the game and Lucic scored on the power play with just 13 minutes elapsed in the opening frame.
“We just dug ourselves into a hole right away,” Kings captain Anze Kopitar said. “Going down two goals at this time of year against teams we’re playing, it’s certainly not the way you want to start the game and it’s, obviously, tough to play catch-up hockey.”
The Kings need a win or points at the very least with the race for the second wild card spot coming to precious few games.
“We were watching L.A. play against Calgary last night and know how they can play with momentum,” Edmonton head coach Todd McLellan said. “One of the things Calgary did really well was control the momentum swings in the game, and I thought we did that early as well. I thought we established momentum early, got after them. I think that was a huge difference in the game. They played well, but we kept going, and back-to-back we put them on their heels in the first period, and that was to our advantage.”
WATCH: All Kings vs. Oilers highlights
Jonathan Quick made 29 saves in taking the loss for LA and the Kings dropped to 34-31-7.
“We played better tonight than we did last night (a 5-2 loss at the Calgary Flames),” LA head coach Darryl Sutter said. “We’re a slow-start team for whatever reason. Tonight, I thought we turned the puck over once to that McDavid line, and then got a bad break on their power-play goal.”
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