LOS ANGELES — Paul LaDue scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period, and the Los Angeles Kings rallied for a 4-3 victory over the St. Louis Blues on Monday.
LaDue, who was playing in only his 15th game this season and first since Dec. 29, snapped a wrist shot from the right faceoff circle past Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington for his second goal of the season.
Jonathan Quick stopped 33 shots to earn his 302nd NHL victory, which is fourth-best among U.S.-born goaltenders.
Los Angeles Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Anze Kopitar and Tyler Toffoli each had a goal and an assist while Brendan Leipsic had two assists. Drew Doughty also scored for Los Angeles, which has won three of its last five.
Mackenzie MacEachern, Oskar Sundqvist and Ryan O’Reilly scored for St. Louis, and Binnington made 25 saves.
MacEachern scored his first NHL goal when he knocked in a rebound of a Vince Dunn slap shot while falling to the ice at 10:31 of the first period.
Sundqvist put the Blues up 2-0 when he took a pass from Barbashev and lofted it past Quick’s stick with 1:11 left in the period. Los Angeles got a goal 15 seconds later when Leipsic picked off an errant pass from Barbashev in the Blues zone and then passed between two St. Louis skaters to an open Toffoli.
Doughty tied it at 2 at 7:15 of the second on a 5-on-3 power play when he directed a slap shot from just outside the faceoff circle past Binnington. Kopitar gave the Kings a 3-2 advantage late in the period with his team-leading 14th goal of the season off a pass from Dustin Brown on a 2-on-1 rush.
O’Reilly — who leads the Blues with 18 goals — tied it six minutes into the third on the power play when his shot from the right faceoff circle went over Quick’s glove and just under the crossbar.
NOTES: It was the second straight game that the Kings have scored on a two-man advantage. Ilya Kovalchuk scored Los Angeles’ lone goal on Saturday at Colorado on a 5-on-3 power play. … The Kings sent forward Matt Luff down to Ontario of the AHL before the game.
UP NEXT
Blues: Travel to Anaheim on Wednesday for their final game before the All-Star break.
Kings: Won’t play again until Feb. 2, when they face the New York Islanders to begin a six-game trip.
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Joe Reedy, The Associated Press