Kings sweep

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robert gauthier / los angeles times Kings winger Dustin Penner celebrates teammate Jordan Nolan�s first-period goal while Blues goalie Brian Elliott reacts. (TRIBUNE MEDIA MCT)

LOS ANGELES -- Get set for Darryl Sutter to be elevated from saviour to genius, Dustin Brown to draw overheated comparisons to Jarome Iginla, and Jonathan Quick to Miikka Kiprusoff, and for the whole hype machine to try to consume the Los Angeles Kings... as only L.A. hype can.

But if they can keep the swelling down in their heads until they find out who they play in the next round and when -- ice packs might do the trick -- it almost seems possible that the Kings could be as good as they're suddenly cracked up to be.

The first No. 8 seed in NHL playoff history to knock off both the No. 1- and No. 2-ranked teams in their conference, Sutter's hard-nosed, opportunistic squad survived the first real signs of life from the St. Louis Blues to complete a sweep Sunday of a Ken Hitchcock team that looked just about bulletproof a month ago -- but nothing like it this past week.

It's taken the Kings one game more than the minimum to dispatch two regular-season juggernauts who peaked too early -- first the Vancouver Canucks, now the Blues -- and with their Game 4, 3-1 victory, they ignited a goosebump-inducing, towel-waving, final two minutes of the sort that hasn't been experienced by an L.A. hockey crowd in 19 years.

That's how long it's been since a Kings squad got past the second round of Stanley Cup play, and though the rest of the story of that 1993 team didn't have the happy ending, it was still the high-water mark in the franchise's history.

"Well, we don't want to be known as the only other team that got past the second round," said Brown, the Kings captain who scored the winning goal and the empty-net clincher Sunday at Staples Center.

"So I'm pretty excited right now, but it's one of those things where you wake up tomorrow and realize you're just halfway done to where we want to go."

They will await the winner of the Phoenix-Nashville series, which the Coyotes lead 3-1 and can close out tonight at home.

"They're the best team that we've played," said Hitchcock. "They play the way you have to play to win the Cup now. Over the course of the disappointment that's gone on here for three to four years, they look to me like they figured it out."

The Blues never did, and Sutter thought it might have had something to do with the amount of time St. Louis had to kill before starting the second round. But the Blues weren't making that excuse.

They just never got enough done around the Kings' net, and they took so many dumb penalties that negated power plays or handed L.A. the means to turn around whatever momentum the Blues may have mounted, in the end, they greatly helped author their own defeat.

"When the temperature in the games went up, I think our personal discipline wasn't there," Hitchcock admitted. "I thought the little edge that you need is a learned skill and we didn't have it. So we took penalties at the wrong time, we got emotionally wrapped up during the shift, and couldn't shut it down when you need to shut it down. It's almost like you need to go through that to figure it out. You can talk about it and bark about it all you want, but you got to go through it and we went through it."

"It's tough to think about the opportunity that we had in front of us and the way we didn't respond to it," said Blue captain David Backes. "Until the second period tonight, I don't think we got to that simple, hard-nosed game that you have to play to be successful, and two periods out of 12 is just not enough to even start to dent their will. We didn't put enough heat on them to make them crack."

The Kings got the perfect early start with a goal by fourth-liner Jordan Nolan before five minutes had elapsed, but gave one back when Kevin Shattenkirk surprised Quick with a long slapper from the wing that probably shouldn't have beaten him. The home side took the lead for good on a similar shot from the other wing by Brown, who blew it past St. Louis goalie Brian Elliott's glove.

Quick made a series of stellar saves in the third to preserve the win, the first off Backes, who was rumoured to have been playing with a gastro-intestinal problem, and then a two-save combo on Kris Russell, after which the goalie reached back to scoop the rebound off the stick of Alex Pietrangelo.

"As well as we played today, you still have to outwork the goalie," Hitchcock said. "If you look at the seven games we played against Quick this year, we still only scored seven goals. And we have not found a way to outwork him.''

-- Postmedia News

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 7, 2012 C1