Stanley Cup Finals 2012: Revisiting the L.A. Kings' Recent Game 3 History

Here they go again. For the fourth time in as many rounds in the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Los Angeles Kings come home looking to expand upon a 2-0 series lead and push their opponent to the precipice.

So far, they are three-for-three in that department, having won each of their Game 3s by a cumulative score of 7-3. Los Angeles has yet to so much as fall behind at any point when trying to mount a 3-0 advantage.

And if their recent history is any indication, there is no shortage of individual Kings to watch for in Monday night’s effort to put the New Jersey Devils on the ropes in the championship round.

A swift summation of L.A.’s most impressive Game 3 performers in this postseason to date is as follows.

Dustin Brown

The captain and co-leader in playoff production was the lone goal-getter in the third game of the opening round, his third-period strike at the 6:30 mark standing as the decider in a 1-0 victory over Vancouver.

Brown threw four hits in that game as well as in a 4-2 win over St. Louis and then went on a bona-fide rampage against the Coyotes.

On a night that saw Phoenix captain Shane Doan lead all participants with 11 hits, his L.A. counterpart checked nine visiting skaters, giving the two captains a little more than 25 percent of the night’s 79 registered hits.

The critical difference in the end, though, was Brown’s primary assist on Anze Kopitar’s equalizer a mere two minutes and seven seconds after the desperate Coyotes had taken a 1-0 lead. The Kings did not look back after that for the remainder of the night.

Brown, by the way, has been pointless in the final round in spite of his team’s back-to-back 2-1 overtime victories over the Devils. Is he due to break through again on Monday?

Drew Doughty

When the Kings were looking to rerun their act from the Vancouver series in the second round versus St. Louis, the two-way defenseman exonerated himself from the consequences of five giveaways.

Instead, Doughty stood out for having a hand in three goals as part of a 4-2 win. He helped set up the icebreaker in the first period, assisted on a rare power-play strike in the second that would stand as the clincher and then slugged home some insurance in the closing stanza.

In addition to the production, Doughty threw in four body-checks and two takeaways. He would later swell up his defensive stats in the third game of the conference finals with eight hits and two blocked shots.

Dwight King

The rookie has supplied a pair of go-ahead Game 3 goals, including the clincher in a 2-1 triumph over Phoenix in the conference championship.

Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams

Brown’s two linemates both have at least one point in each of the first three Game 3s.

First, they collaborated to set up the captain for his aforementioned winner against the Canucks. Then they worked with Doughty on the icebreaker en route to a 4-2 win over St. Louis, where Kopitar also had the primary assist on Mike Richards’ power-play strike and eventual clincher.

The Brown-Kopitar-Williams troika shared credit on the same play once more in the Phoenix series when they swiftly deleted a 1-0 deficit before it could begin to dry. That would effectively set the stage for the Kings' win.

Jonathan Quick

The opposing shot totals in the third game of the last two rounds combine to fall short of what the Canucks threw at Quick in Game 3 of the conference quarterfinals.

That said, the Kings’ first home game of the 2012 playoffs was Quick’s second-most overwhelming regulation workload of the spring, trailing none other than the preceding 48-shot salvo at Rogers Arena two nights prior.

Nonetheless, he followed up on that 46-save effort with a 41-save shutout to put the two-time President’s Trophy winners on the verge of being swept.

And there was no shortage of drama that night for the front-running Conn Smythe candidate. Quick salvaged his goose-egg by repelling four unanswered shorthanded bids by the Canucks to tie the game within the final 37 seconds of regulation.