LOS ANGELES — Quinton Byfield ended the Kings’ deepest funk of the campaign with a goal 27 seconds into overtime, securing a 2-1 OT victory over the St. Louis Blues, who’d beaten them 3-2 in a shootout Wednesday.
The Kings pumped the brakes on their season-long winless stretch at five games, while the Blues moved to 7-1-2 in their last 10 decisions, remaining in hot pursuit of a wild-card berth. The Kings stayed three points in front of the Calgary Flames, who won 1-0 Saturday, for third place in the Pacific Division.
Anže Kopitar opened the scoring and Quinton Byfield closed it. Andrei Kuzmenko logged 16:02, playing on the first power-play unit as well as the top line in his Kings debut after being traded from Philadelphia yesterday. Darcy Kuemper stopped 19 shots.
Nick Leddy tallied the Blues’ only goal. Joel Hofer had 22 saves.
Overtime had barely begun when Byfield drove from the left-wing wall to the low slot and lifted a shot that tucked cozily under the crossbar to snap the winless skid.
In the final frame, St. Louis absorbed much of the play but found an equalizer just the same when Leddy’s long, seeing-eye shot beat Kuemper inside the post at the 4:16 mark.
Through 40 minutes, there had been more disallowed goals than actual goals in the game. The Kings clung to a 1-0 lead, but an eventful stanza saw Kuemper rob Pavel Buchnevich on the heels of a hit post for the Blues. Hofer later returned the favor, sliding to stonewall Alex Laferriere on a golden opportunity from the blue paint.
St. Louis also reciprocated in another sense, taking a Kings goal off the board after the Blues had one annulled in the first period. Vladislav Gavrikov’s long bank pass up the boards for Laferriere backed up the defense, so Laferriere held up and hit a hustling Gavrikov for a well-placed shot that seemed to catch Hofer off-guard. That surprise faded into relief quickly as a very quick review was able to determine the Kings were offside when they entered the zone.
The Kings’ first period began as a brush with calamity but ended with a 1-0 lead, both thanks to the reunited defense pairing of Drew Doughty and Mikey Anderson.
Just 28 seconds into the contest, Doughty tripped Dylan Holloway, and a mere seven seconds into his penalty, St. Louis captain Brayden Schenn appeared to score the game’s first goal.
But video review showed that Anderson’s last-instant swipe prevented all but the final millimeters of the puck from fully crossing the goal line, nullifying the goal after a lengthy review.
Instead, it was the Kings getting on the board first, at 14:35. Kopitar did the dirty work to extend possession below the goal line and then found style in function above the hash marks, where he tipped Doughty’s shot skyward and over Hofer’s head for a goal. Anderson earned the secondary assist on Kopitar’s 15th goal of 2024-25.