Troy Brouwer scored in the seventh round of the shootout to give the St. Louis Blues a 2-1 win against the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday at Staples Center.
Blues forward Alexander Steen scored in the first round of the tiebreaker, and Kings forward Marian Gaborik matched him by scoring to start the third round. Brouwer ended the game four rounds later by snapping a shot over the glove of Kings’ goaltender Jonathan Quick.
Defenseman Alex Pietrangelo scored and goaltender Brian Elliott made 26 saves through overtime and six more in the shootout for the Blues (24-14-7), who ended a five-game losing streak. St. Louis has gone past regulation in each of its past four games; the Blues lost the first three, including 4-3 in a shootout at the Anaheim Ducks on Friday.
“It’s four games in a row now that we have really dug in,” Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said. “You get into overtime or extra time and you are going to win some and lose some. We now have played really well for four or five games in a row. We just have to keep it going.”
After a stretch where the Blues said their play was trending upward without a win to show for it, this one felt like a reward.
“We’ve put a lot of work in and a lot of effort in,” forward David Backes said. “Now we’ve found that second point and it feels like a good reward for a great effort against a team that was rested and really came at us hard. We responded really well.”
Anze Kopitar scored in the second period and Quick made 15 saves for the Kings (26-12-3), who lost for the second time in their past eight games. Quick has allowed one goal in regulation in each of his past four starts.
“I thought the effort was there, but it wasn’t enough,” Kopitar said. “We have to find more ways to score more goals at home, and lately maybe we’ve dropped off just a little bit. Maybe we’re relying on Quickie a little bit too much. We’ve just got to find the back of the net, that’s the bottom line.”
Kopitar opened the scoring at 9:54 of the second period when he took a pass off the boards from Milan Lucic and beat Elliott with a backhand shot.
Pietrangelo tied it 2:39 later when he went top shelf over Quick with a wrist shot from the left faceoff dot.
The Kings had to kill a five-minute power when defenseman Brayden McNabb was assessed a major for charging and a game misconduct at 7:59 of the third period after a hit that resulted in an injury to Blues forward Magnus Paajarvi.
“It’s unfortunate,” Kings defenseman Jake Muzzin said. “It’s a tough call for the refs. It happened fast. The call was what it was and we had to kill the penalty. That’s what we did.”
Kings forward Jeff Carter had the best scoring chance during the long power play, but Elliott stopped him on a breakaway.
Earlier in the game, St. Louis defenseman Carl Gunnarsson left with an upper-body injury and didn’t return. The Blues were already without defenseman Jay Bouwmeester, forward Paul Stastny and goaltender Jake Allen, each of whom was injured in the game at Anaheim.
“We know we’re going to have to shoulder the load and have responsibility on different guys,” Backes said. “We need to bind together and stick up for each other and make sure we have a good concerted team effort. We did a good job of that.”
Despite the losses to injury, the Blues went 1-0-1 on back-to-back nights in Southern California.
“It’s never easy to lose guys,” Pietrangelo said. “But I’m pretty proud of the way, last night, the forwards stepped up after losing Jay and Paul and then tonight, again the D all chipped in.”
Hitchcock had no updates on either player following the game.
“We’ll let you know Monday after practice on everybody,” Hitchcock said. “That part has been a tough weekend for us.”
The Blues are off until they host the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday. The Kings host the Detroit Red Wings on Monday.
