The Kings spent the roughly 45 hours between the end of their 3-0 victory in Game 3 of this Stanley Cup finals Monday night and the start of Game 4 Wednesday evening talking about needing to match their same level of intensity from the previous three games.
But after the Rangers clawed at least partially back into this series with a 2-1 victory in front of a sellout crowd of 18,006 inside the Garden, the Kings were left knowing they wasted their first opportunity to close the series out and lift the Cup for the second time in three years.
“I think we could [play tougher],” said Kings captain Dustin Brown, whose beautiful break-away goal midway through the second period turned out to be the only time anyone beat Henrik Lundqvist all night.
“I’m not talking about big hits. I’m talking about puck battles, stick battles, in front of the net, getting in front of Lundqvist more.
“I think physicality, the physical part of the game, is very broad. It’s not just about the body contact. … It’s about getting in the dirty areas, and we can do better there.”
But after falling behind 2-0 for the third time in four games in this series and the fourth time in their last five going back to Game 7 of the Western Conference finals against the Blackhawks, the Kings did get better — much better, in fact. Following Brown’s goal at 8:46 of the second, Los Angeles proceeded to send wave after wave at Lundqvist at the other end of the ice, only to see him repeatedly turn their shots aside, including all 15 in the third period while limiting the Rangers to just one at the other end.
“We wanted to win this hockey game,” Kings forward Tanner Pearson said. “We were down a goal and wanted to push it into overtime or win it.”
While Lundqvist was undeniably brilliant, the Kings said they could do a better job of getting traffic in front of Lundqvist to make his life more difficult.
“He played well for them tonight,” Brown said, “but we need to make it harder on him.”
Still, for as good as Lundqvist was, the Kings had a pair of golden opportunities that they couldn’t convert. Twice — once midway through the first period and again with just over a minute left in the third — the puck sat behind Lundqvist on the Rangers goal line, just waiting for a King to tap it into the net.
But first Anton Stralman and then Derek Stepan managed to slide it to safety each time, allowing the Rangers to live to fight another day.
“We got pucks behind him, but we couldn’t tap them in,” Pearson said. “We’ve just got to keep on doing what we did tonight.”