LOS ANGELES — Although the 2006-07 edition of the New Jersey Devils is not as good as 2002-03 team that won the Stanley Cup, the Devils are essentially the same team that ended the season in first place in the Atlantic Division and in third place in the Eastern Conference.

On Monday night, the Devils ended a five-game road trip, with the last four games in California, at Staples Center to face the Los Angeles Kings.

And with the Kings being mostly a young, inexperienced team that had been losing games by the truck load, conventional wisdom would probably lead most people to the conclusion that the Devils should make quick, easy work of the Kings.

Guess again.

When the ice chips had settled, the Kings gave the Devils all they could handle and won the game in a shootout, 3-2 , in front of an announced crowd of 16,223 fans.

Lubomir Visnovsky and Michael Cammalleri scored in regulation for the Kings, while Brian Gionta and Travis Zajac scored for the Devils.

Kings goalie Mathieu Garon shut out the Devils in the shootout, while Anze Kopitar and Alexander Frolov used extraordinary moves to beat superstar goalie Martin Brodeur, with Kopitar being credited with the shootout winner.

“I knew it was Martin Brodeur,” Kopitar said about his shootout goal. “Actually, I asked [Kings veteran winger Scott] Thornton on the bench what the best move was, and he told me just to come up with something. He just said, ‘use your move, trust yourself and go for it.’”

“I know he has an amazing reputation,” Kopitar added. “I know he’s a big superstar, but I tried not to think about that. I just focused on the puck and my move.”

Kopitar was very focused in the shootout, understanding the importance of scoring on the first shot.

“I was the first shooter, so I knew if I scored, I’d put a lot of pressure on their team,” said Kopitar. “I moved at the last second, so I kind of froze him. He probably thought I was going to shoot it, but then I pulled it to my backhand and waited a little longer. He straightened out his arm I just slid it in.”

“I knew I had him frozen, so it worked out pretty good.”

Frolov’s shootout goal was equally breathtaking.

“I know [Brodeur is] a really good goalie, so I had to do something special,” said Frolov. “I just faked the shot. I had to make some moves to beat him.”

And even though Brodeur is a superstar goalie and is destined for the Hockey Hall of Fame, Frolov was not fazed.

“He’s not unbeatable, you know.”

Speaking of unbeatable, Kings goalie Mathieu Garon, who put in another strong effort in his third consecutive start, was exactly that in the shootout, stopping Patrik Elias and Gionta, making it look easy.

“[Brodeur is] one of the best or the best in the league,” said Garon. “He’s a great goalie and he played awesome tonight again. You know that if you give up a goal in the shootout, it’s going to be too much against that guy, so that’s what I wanted to do. Make sure I take it one shot at a time and not give them anything.”

“It’s great when the shootout goes for the home team,” said Kings head coach Marc Crawford. “There’s just so much excitement in the building when the shootout starts. You don’t always get your way, but it is nice when it happens that way. Great moves by our guys. All three of our shooters did a terrific job, and Mathieu saved his two best saves for the shootout.”

“He’s given us two really solid performances, and we’ve been really pleased with Mathieu,” added Crawford. “I couldn’t be happier for him. He inspired as much confidence in us in the shootout as anything. He looked strong on both attempts. They never got to the third one because we scored. Both of their attempts—they didn’t have a chance of going in because Mathieu was right on it.”

Continuing on the theme of the Devils not being unbeatable, as Frolov said, he certainly was not fazed by Brodeur, and that may have been the Kings’ attitude going into the game, as they certainly were not fazed. In fact, they were very resilient in winning their second straight game for just the second time this season.

“It was a great win for us,” said Crawford. “It was a real character win.”

“We’ve beaten two pretty good teams that have two of the premier goaltenders in the league,” added Crawford, referring to Saturday’s 3-1 win over the Calgary Flames. “And both those goaltenders played great against us.”

“We needed a big win like that, now we have two in a row,” said Garon. “It’s huge for us. The guys played awesome again tonight. We’re sticking with our system.”

Their resiliency showed late in the game when they had to kill three penalties, two in the third period and one in overtime.

“It was a gutsy effort by our team,” said Crawford. “When you kill a penalty in overtime, it’s always huge.”

“I can’t say enough about our penalty-kill at the end,” said Crawford. “We did get the two power play goals against us during the game, but it shows how much character and determination we’ve got and the thought process of our guys recognizing that the next penalty-kill is the one that could be the momentum changer for us.”

“That was the case for tonight,” added Crawford. “We changed the momentum with the kills throughout the third period and into overtime. They were pivotal in the game. If you look at it, I don’t think they a chance in the last part of it.”

Indeed. Kings penalty-killers either blocked shots or took away the shooting and passing lanes, especially in overtime.

“Our defense did a great job fronting the shooters for New Jersey,” Crawford explained. “In overtime, the one advantage we’ve got is that the ice is chewed up. It’s been played on for 25 minutes as opposed to just twenty. As long as you stay in those shooting lanes and take away one-time opportunities, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to get the kill. Mathieu only had to make the one save and he made it.”

“The guys we had out on the offensive part of it, both [Sean] Avery and [Craig] Conroy, did a terrific job,” Crawford elaborated. “They won face-offs, stayed in front of the point guy and they blocked some shots.”

As Crawford pointed out, despite giving up two power play goals earlier in the game, his penalty-killers bounced back in a big way.

“Obviously, we want to correct the part so that we’re not giving the two goals up,” said Crawford. “But you can’t worry about what’s happened. You can only focus on the next kill, and I thought our guys did a great job in the third period and in overtime on the penalty-kill. That was probably the difference in the game.”

But before all that, the Kings displayed resiliency in the second period as well.

After Gionta gave the Devils a 1-0 lead just sixteen seconds into the period, Visnovsky responded with a goal of his own at 5:07.

And in similar fashion, after Zajac scored at 13:56, Cammalleri answered at 17:56 with a power play goal, a rare occurrence against the least-penalized team in the National Hockey League—the Devils average just over eleven penalty minutes per game.

That was an important point for the Kings, who have relied heavily on their smoking-hot power play in recent games.

“The coaches brought that up tonight and made it known to us that we were going to have to work extra hard to draw penalties,” said Cammalleri. “I think that by getting the puck down low behind their defensemen, moving our feet and making them work hard to not give us scoring chances, that’s how you force teams to take penalties.”

Cammalleri’s power play goal was even bigger because scoring on the power play against the Devils is no easy task. To illustrate, going into Monday’s action, the Devils were perfect in 17 penalty-kills in their last six games.

“Our power play is improving and our penalty-kill is pretty good, so we just have to build on that,” said Kopitar. “Everything is working great and we’re winning hockey games.”

More resiliency: In addition to their special teams and their performance in the shootout, the Kings also got another strong game from their defensemen.

“They’ve got forwards,” Crawford said about the Devils. “You look at that group, Gionta’s a big-time scorer. The young kid [Zach] Parise, I really like him. He’s strong on the puck. Their centers, [Scott] Gomez, [John] Madden, the young kid Zajac, they’re all talented people. You go though their list of forwards, they’re going to get chances. They were a handful for our defense, but I thought our defense was equal to the challenge tonight, and when you get solid performances from your defensemen, you’re going to be in games.”

And then there was Garon.

“During the game, I thought he was very good, and I thought our defense was terrific in front of him,” said Crawford.

“That’s what we’ve asked of our goalies. Just be good. Keep working hard. They’ve been working their tails off [in practice]. Above anybody, both Mathieu and Dan Cloutier, they’ve been working so hard, and they’ve been trying to do the right things and having that hard work rubbing off on the rest of the team.”

And perhaps that hard work is indeed rubbing off.

“I’ve always believed that your goaltenders end up being the conscience of your team,” Crawford explained. “They end up being the motivational center of your group. And when you see them working hard it just inspires the people in front of them to play hard. So you see a few more blocked shots. You see guys paying attention to detail in front of them.”

“There’s no doubt that better goaltending coincides with better defensive play from your team, and the last couple of nights, Mathieu has been the benefactor of that, and he’s made saves when he’s had to.”

Garon was certainly a huge factor in this game, and he made a big save in the closing seconds of the third period to get the Kings to overtime.

With just 3.4 seconds left in the third period, Gomez picked up a loose puck in the right corner of the Kings zone and threw a blind, backhand centering pass to Rafalski at the top of the slot, with traffic in front.

The shot came in with just 0.5 seconds left on the clock, and although Garon was partially screened, he came up with a big save.

“The puck ended up in the slot and all I could see was a little bit of it, and it’s a good thing he shot on the ice, because I was on my knees already,” Garon explained.

“They’ve got three or four good lines, and they can score from everywhere,” Garon added. “They didn’t shoot much tonight, but most of the shots were kind of hard to see and kind of hard to save, too.”

Garon’s big save at the end of the third period preserved the 2-2 tie, and got the Kings into overtime and the shootout, where he had a big hand in getting his team two points in the standings.

After all this about Garon, on the opposite end of the ice, Brodeur was no slouch, and he showed why he is headed to the Hockey Hall of Fame early in the overtime period.

Kopitar had carried the puck into the right corner of the New Jersey zone. He was checked off the puck but using his strength, he quickly got it back and immediately threw an astoundingly quick pass across the goal mouth to Brown, was parked at left crease.

Brown got off a wrist shot and had an easy slam-dunk goal into the open left side of the net. That is, until Brodeur dove back to his right and got the butt end of his stick on the puck. The puck then hit the left goal post and wound up in Brodeur’s glove just 25 seconds into the overtime period.

No doubt about it, it was a spectacular save.

Almost as brilliant was the play Kopitar made to get the puck and then pass it to Brown, seemingly all in one quick motion.

“I knew [Brown] was back door,” said Kopitar.

“I had to pay him back for that pass in the last game [against Calgary on Saturday when Brown set-up Kopitar for the first goal of the game],” he kidded.

“He had an empty net,” added Kopitar. “Too bad he didn’t score. But that doesn’t matter. We got the two points and it was a big win.”

For the Devils, it was their fourth consecutive loss to end their five-game road trip.

“We saw some positive things happen tonight, but again some of those same things came back to haunt us,” said Devils head coach Claude Julien. “We had an opportunity to win it in overtime with a four-on-three and we didn’t generate much there.”

“We didn’t even generate any opportunities to win the game and that’s frustrating,” said Elias. “When you look at the trip, that’s three of the last four games where we had a lot of chances to overturn the game on our side and we haven’t done that.”

“Disappointing,” said Gionta. “We didn’t get the points we needed to get. We played three pretty good games, but we didn’t find a way to win.”

Brodeur, who was the Devils’ best player in this game, gave credit to the Kings.

“They definitely were able to pick us apart in certain areas of our game,” said Brodeur. “They got some pucks to me, got some guys crashing to the net and had a couple of screens in front of me. A couple of them they got a little lucky on, but you’ve got to give them credit. They played well. We scored a couple of power-play goals, but when it was five-on-five we didn’t do the job.”

“It’s tough, we’re definitely gripping the stick a little tight,” said Zajac. “We have to get past that and find a way to win games.”


SCRATCHES
New Jersey: Alexander Brooks (healthy), Cam Janssen (separated right shoulder)
Los Angeles: Raitis Ivanans (healthy), Oleg Tverdovsky (groin injury), Mike Weaver (healthy)

GOALIES
New Jersey: Martin Brodeur
Los Angeles: Mathieu Garon

OFFICIALS
Referees: Dan O’Rourke, Kelly Sutherland
Linesmen: Mike Cvik, Mark Wheler


FIRST PERIOD

No scoring...the Devils were the better team early, but the Kings gradually picked up their game and ended up skating even with them.


SECOND PERIOD

The Devils got things going in the second period quickly...

1. NEW JERSEY. Gionta 10 (Gomez, Elias), 0:16 POWER PLAY

Kings winger Brian Willsie was in the box for hooking at 20:00 of the first period, giving the Devils a power play to start the second period, and they wasted little time. Right after the center ice face-off to start the period, the Devils moved the puck with speed through center ice, forcing the Kings to back way off. Elias passed to Gomez on left wing. He carried the puck across the Kings blue line before passing across to Gionta at the top of the right circle. From the right face-off dot, he fired a wrist shot that beat Garon over his glove hand, off the left goal post and into the net.

Because of the speed of the Devils’ attack, Garon had to move to his left quickly to try and cover the right side of the net. Gionta caught him moving and beat him off the far post.

2. LOS ANGELES. Visnovsky 7 (Derek Armstrong), 5:07

Visnovsky picked up a loose puck in the right corner of the Kings zone. He passed ahead to Armstrong, who carried the puck up left wing and into the New Jersey zone. At left point, Armstrong dropped the puck to Visnovsky, who moved into the left circle. From below the left face-off dot, he threw a low wrist shot/pass into the crease. Brown was there with Devils defenseman Colin White. Both players got their stick blades down, but the puck hit White’s stick and deflected past Brodeur.

3. NEW JERSEY. Zajac 5 (Rafalski, Elias), 13:56 POWER PLAY

Willsie found himself in the penalty box again when he was whistled off for slashing at 13:00. The Devils moved the puck around the Kings zone while the Kings penalty-killers were standing around watching. The Devils threw not one, but two passes across the slot—a cardinal sin of penalty-killing—the last one going to Rafalski at top of the left circle. He fired a low one-timer that Garon stopped with his right leg pad. But Zajac was alone at left crease and was able to knock the rebound into the net behind Garon, who was down in his crease.

This was a terrible penalty-killing shift by the Kings. They were standing around, just watching the Devils move the puck around their zone while Garon was hopelessly fighting to see through screens the entire time.

4. LOS ANGELES. Cammalleri 9 (Kopitar, Brown), 17:56 POWER PLAY

Devils forward Jamie Langenbrunner was in the box for hooking at 17:25 when Brown got the puck at left point. He threw the puck around the left corner boards and Kopitar got it behind the goal line, to the right of the net. He passed to Cammalleri at the top of the right circle. He faked a move to his right before winding up and blasting a high slap shot past Brodeur, beating top shelf, upper left corner.

White was standing in the right circle, right in line between Cammalleri and Brodeur, who was hopelessly screened.

“Whitey was just on no-man’s land there,” said Brodeur. “That’s a tough play. A lot of teams are using that play against us and we’re trying to work on it as much as he can. Whitey just got himself on the wrong side of Cammalleri and he screened me just enough. But you’ve got to give him credit. When you pump the water bottle from out there, it’s a good shot.”

The goal was Cammalleri’s 100th point with the Kings.


THIRD PERIOD

No scoring...both teams got their chances in the third period, but the Kings had the edge in this period.


OVERTIME

No scoring...as stated earlier, Kopitar made a brilliant play to set up Brown for a glorious chance just 25 seconds into the period, but Brodeur bested them, coming up with tremendous save.

Later in the overtime, period, Kings defenseman Peter Harrold took a dubious hooking penalty at 2:29, but the Kings penalty-killers were stellar. If they were not blocking shots, they were getting into the passing and shooting lanes, limiting the Devils to one quality chance that was stopped by Garon.


SHOOTOUT

New Jersey shooters: Elias, Gionta, John Madden
Los Angeles shooters: Kopitar, Brown, Frolov

The Kings opted to shoot first, with Kopitar taking the first shot. He skated down the right side of the slot and from just above the right inner hash mark, he faked a shot, getting Brodeur to go down to his knees, thinking that Kopitar was going for the five-hole (between his leg pads). Kopitar then deked twice, and slid the puck around Brodeur, sliding the puck into the net, just inside the right goal post, with Brodeur sprawled on the ice.

Elias tried a move to Garon’s right, but Garon came way out to challenge, and took away everything Elias has to shoot at. Elias tried moving to the left side of the net and took a low wrist shot, but Garon was there to swallow it up easily.

Brown tried to beat Brodeur through the five-hole with a wrist shot, but was easily denied.

Gionta skated down the slot with speed and just tried to beat Garon glove side with a quick wrist shot. But Garon made the glove save.

Frolov moved down the slot, and faked a wrist shot from just above the hash marks. He then used a head fake to get Brodeur to open his pads. He then deked three times, getting Brodeur to go down. Frolov then slid the puck under him on his forehand for the goal.

No written description could ever bring the sheer beauty and magic of Kopitar’s and Frolov’s shootout goals to life. But make no mistake. They were absolutely amazing, absolutely breathtaking, highlight-reel goals on which Brodeur had no chance on at all. The two young forwards made the superstar goalie look silly, and, no offense to Brodeur, that is putting it mildly. Both players had Brodeur moving in multiple directions on their moves—Brodeur could not have been more badly fooled.


THREE STARS (OFFICIAL)
#3 - Visnovsky; #2 - Elias; #1 - Brown

KINGSHOCKEY.COM’S THREE STARS
#3 - Visnovsky; #2 - Garon; #1 - Kopitar

For more information, including more interviews with the players and coaches, we invite you to check out:

OFFICIAL SCORING AND STATISTICS
NHL Scoresheet
NHL Superstats
NHL Play-By-Play

WIRE SERVICE REPORTS
ASSOCIATED PRESS Report From ESPN.com

LOCAL NEWSPAPERS/SITES
Daily News
Kings Get Brodeur In Shootout

Inside The Kings
Monday (11/27) Morning Skate Notes

Orange County Register
Kings Foil Brodeur, Devils In Shootout

Los Angeles Times
Garon Wins This Face-Off

NEW JERSEY NEWSPAPERS
Bergan Record
Devils Tripped Up Out West

New Jersey Star-Ledger
This L.A. Story Has Bad Ending For Devils

OTHER SITES
Inside Hockey
Even The Kings Are Bedeviled

NEXT GAME: The Kings get a couple of days off before hitting the road for a quick, one-game trip to visit Wayne Gretzky’s Phoenix Coyotes on Thursday. Game time: 6:00 PM PST. Televised in the Los Angeles area on FSN West.

Gann Matsuda, who has been writing about the Kings since 1986, is the News Editor for Kingshockey.com.
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