LOS ANGELES—The Kings’ four unanswered goals from their top three lines took out the competition. Los Angeles opened the gap late in the first quarter and never let go of their 5-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning at theStaples Center on Tuesday night. The Kings moved into fourth place in the Pacific Division with their fourth straight win.
LA’s first line with Anze Kopitar at center opened the scoring at 14:58 with Drew Doughty skating the puck forward to drop the puck back to Kopitar for his sixth of the season. Their third line made it 2-0 on the power play with Matt Frattin scoring his second after receiving a pass from Slava Voynov fighting the puck off the boards to connect with Frattin’s angled goal from the far end. The Kings led shots on the net outshooting Tampa Bay 10-7.
They took the Lightning out of the game in the second with Justin Williams scoring the team’s third straight on a backhander recording his eighth. While shorthanded on Tampa’s second man advantage, Dwight King scored his seventh goal on a deflected shot from Linden Vey who recorded his fourth assist in the process.
The Lightning took two shots to the net in the remaining 20 minutes of the period and scored during their double minor power play with Valtteri Filppula scoring his ninth; ending the likelihood of the Kings grabbing their third consecutive shutout. In response, Kings Captain Dustin Brown scored his fourth at 17:15 with a centering shot all alone in front of goaltender Ben Bishop. Bishop made 26 saves in his third loss of the season with a .839 save percentage against him.
Tampa Bay made a third period effort to comeback in a miraculous way, but the crystal ball was not handing them a clear answer. Despite outshootingLos Angeles 12-10 and Victor Hedman scoring his fourth, the margin was too much for them to recover.
Ben Scrivens took the number one position at the net for the Kings, with Jonathan Quick heading to the injured reserve until Christmas, according to General Manager Dean Lombardi. He stopped 19 of 21 in his fifth win with a .905 save percentage. The Alberta native will have to keep his stamina up against the New Jersey Devils and Colorado Avalanche in the next few days.
