EL SEGUNDO – It was March 22. The Kings were in Colorado to take on the Avalanche. Both teams are playoff contenders, so a close game seemed in the offing. But Anze Kopitar scored four goals and the Kings won 7-1 behind Kopitar’s four goals.
On Monday night at 7:30, some 10 days removed from that shellacking, the Avalanche will enter Staples Center to tangle with the Kings. Playoff berths are still at stake, so that is of the utmost importance. But the Kings figure Colorado might have a little extra emotion because of the way they demolished the Avalanche in their house.
“Yeah, I think any time you go into someone else’s building and a score like that happens, if you’re on the other side of that you want to go into their building and try to do the same thing,” Kings forward Tanner Pearson said Sunday after practice.
“At the same time, it’s a playoff-mentality game and we’re both kind of in the same spot. That probably has a bigger weigh on the game than wanting to come in here and run the score up.”
Another Kings forward, Torrey Mitchell, believes Colorado will be a much tougher nut to crack this time.
“Yeah, I’m sure they’re going to talk about it and try to use it as motivation,” he said. “They’ve responded well since then, they’ve won some big games. But I’m sure they’ve got this one circled on the schedule, try to get some revenge.
“But It’s just going to be a hard-fought game. It’s not going to be a seven-point game again.”
Colorado is 2-2 since that loss, the victories coming over Vegas (2-1, shootout) on March 24 and Chicago (5-0) on Friday.
To Coach John Stevens, while what happened 10 days ago could provide Colorado some extra kick, it’s not that simple.
“Well, I’m sure they’ll be reminded of it,” Stevens said. “If anything, it’ll be a little bit of a motivator for them. But if you look around the league right now, we had that same shellacking from St. Louis not long before that.
“St. Louis goes into Arizona and gets beat. I think with the schedule the way it is, you’re going to get games where you get caught a little off-guard, things don’t go quite your way.”
The Kings were routed 7-2 by St. Louis on March 10 at Staples Center. St. Louis, which is also in the Western Conference playoff hunt, was blown out 6-0 on Saturday at Arizona.
Playoff race update
The Kings (43-28-8, 94 points) were in third place in the Pacific Division by a point over Anaheim before Sunday’s slate of games. The Ducks entered the day with a game in-hand on the Kings, but that was to be wiped away when the Ducks hosted Colorado on Sunday night.
A third-place divisional finish guarantees a team a playoff spot.
Colorado (92 points) and St. Louis (92 points) were tied for fourth in the Central Division, four points behind third-place Minnesota, and are in the hunt for the Western Conference’s two wild-card playoff berths, as are the Kings and Ducks.
The Kings, Ducks and Avalanche all will have three games left entering Monday. But St. Louis will still have four and will host Washington on Monday.
Ice chips
Defenseman Jake Muzzin (upper-body) skated Sunday to keep his legs loose, but that’s about it. “Yeah, step forward,” Stevens said. “I still think he’s going to need some time, but we’ll see.”
Muzzin was injured when he was checked left-shoulder first into the boards during the Kings’ 3-0 victory over Calgary on March 26 and has missed the past two games. At the time of his injury, he was listed as week-to-week.
Alex Iafallo (upper-body) missed Friday’s 2-1 overtime loss at Anaheim and is day-to-day.
Forward Adrian Kempe’s goal-scoring drought has reached 26 games. He has had 10 assists during that time, but he has been stuck at 16 goals since he scored one Feb. 7 in a 5-2 victory over Edmonton.