Stanley Cup Finals 2012: Penalty Kill Bolsters L.A. Kings to Game 3 Victory

The New Jersey Devils were allotted nine minutes and one second of unanswered power-play time in a much-needed third game of the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals. In that time, they issued three shots on net out of six attempts.

The hair-whitening thing about that, though, is they issued the last of those attempts by the time they had played a man up for one minute and 48 seconds on the night. After that, in a partial discredit to themselves and with much due credit to the host Los Angeles Kings, uneventful special teams held sway until the whistles blew the other way.

After serving the last of their time in the box, the Kings would accrue two minutes and three seconds on the man-advantage. It could have been more, except they converted on each of two swiftly successive power plays to morph a 2-0 lead at the second intermission into a 4-0 victory at the final horn.

The first of those conversions, which preceded New Jersey’s second penalty by 75 seconds, saw Jeff Carter converting a setup by Mike Richards with only 15:45 to spare.

It was a fitting dose of redemption for the two first-year Kings who, just two periods prior, could only watch as their teammates tried to offset the consequences of their penalties.

If not for that, Devils captain Zach Parise and power-play catalyst Ilya Kovalchuk could have co-piloted a turning point in Monday’s game, if not the whole series.

During Richards’ two-minute sentence for elbowing Parise, half of which coincided with the first minute of Carter’s double-minor for high-sticking, Kovalchuk unleashed five attempted shots.

Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick repelled the first two, Matt Greene blocked another two during the five-on-three segment and the fifth went wide. Quick also turned aside Parise’s 15-foot wrister while Richards and Carter watched from the sin bin.

Richards was back in action for only 22 seconds before he cleared the zone and drew a tripping minor on point patroller Marek Zidlicky. With Zidlicky sitting down at 16:57 of the opening frame, half of Carter’s four-minute sentence was rendered moot as the contesting clubs played a two-minute four-on-four segment.

Later on, Devils veteran forward Dainius Zubrus did his part to presage a timely swing in momentum by drawing a holding minor on Anze Kopitar merely 36 seconds after Alec Martinez had broken the ice for Los Angeles.

But on this New Jersey power play, beginning at 6:16 of the middle frame, all Kovalchuk did was take a hit in his own zone from Jarret Stoll, who stripped the Devils’ offensive catalyst of the puck and sent a short-handed bid wide of the cage.

And that was coming less than a minute after a penalty-killing Carter was denied by Brodeur.

Only 25 seconds after Kopitar’s jailbreak, Brodeur drew his second goaltender interference minor of the series, sending Dustin Penner to the bin. But the Devils once again silently defaulted on a written invitation to draw a 1-1 knot.

Ditto on Simon Gagne’s slashing sentence, which he brought on moments after Kopitar raised the upper hand to 2-0 and 30 seconds of which carried over to a fresh sheet in the third period.

Nearly three full minutes after Gagne returned and with the 2-0 lead still intact, teammate Justin Williams was cross-checked by New Jersey defenseman Mark Fayne.

From there, in a new twist on a Shakespearean classic, the Kings would pick up a pair of daggers and drive them through the Devils.