LOS ANGELES — The Rangers had no answer for the Kings’ captain when it counted on Saturday night.
After the Kings and Rangers had played more than 90 minutes in Game 2 of these Stanley Cup finals, Los Angeles winger Dustin Brown managed to get his stick on Willie Mitchell’s shot from the point and redirect it past Henrik Lundqvist to give the Kings a 5-4 double-overtime victory over the Rangers, sending the sellout crowd inside Staples Center home happy and sending this series back to the Big Apple with the Kings holding a commanding 2-0 lead.
“I gave it to [Mitchell] and went to the net and just kind of skated away from the net as he was shooting,” Brown said, “and I got a piece of it.”
In doing so, Brown moved his team one win closer to claiming a second Stanley Cup in three years. The 29-year-old forward from Ithaca isn’t the flashiest player on the ice, having scored more than 30 goals just once in his career and having tallied 15 goals in 79 regular-season games this season.
But Brown now has six in the playoffs — including a pair of game-winners, with the first coming in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals against Chicago — while also being the embodiment of the physical, defensive system the Kings have had so much success with under coach Darryl Sutter.
“We all know what type of player he is,” Jarrett Stoll said. “It’s pretty black-and-white. He’s hard, physical, leads by his play, is a huge part of this team.
“No other guy should have the ‘C’ on his jersey, that’s for sure. Big goals, big games, big plays … he does it all.”
And though Brown plays on a line with a pair of superstar forwards in Anze Kopitar, who is leading the playoffs in points with 25 points, and former Ranger Marian Gaborik, whose league-leading 13th goal of this postseason tied the game at four midway through the third, he has more than earned the respect of his more well-known linemates.
“It’s definitely nice for [Brown] to get it,” Kopitar said. “He’s working his [butt] off every game, and to see him get rewarded like that, it’s very nice.”
Now, despite the fact the Kings have yet to hold a regulation lead in this series and have now trailed by two goals in three straight games — all of which they’ve won — they now head to New York with a chance to try and put a hammerlock on the series.
“I understand that we can’t [get off to another slow start], but I also understand the guys we have in our room,” Brown said. “We’ve been through a lot of emotional ups-and-downs, and, again, we’re a confident group that can sort it out, figure it out. We’re well aware of the type of team we are, and how good we can be.”