Written by Lisa Dillman at Los Angeles Time.com
The Kings kept insisting that this playoff series against the San Jose Sharks was far closer than the overall picture indicated.
On Monday, their actions backed up their words.
With a 2-1 victory in Game 3, the Kings cut their series deficit in half and avoided facing the specter of an elimination game here Wednesday. San Jose leads the best-of-seven first-round series, two games to one.
Scoring the winner at 3:47 of overtime for the Kings was Tanner Pearson, who beat Sharks goalie Martin Jones between the pads with a low shot from the left circle. Helping set the stage for the scoring play was a big hit administered by the Kings’ Dustin Brown on the Sharks’ Joonas Donskoi.
“Brownie made a nice hit at the blue line, turned the puck over to me,” Pearson said. “I knew Vinny [Lecavalier] was with me but I didn’t want to risk forcing a pass across and turning it over. I just wanted to get it on net.”
So what went through Pearson’s head?
“Game over,” he said. “We won Game 3. . . .We trust each other in here that we’re going to bounce back.”
Kings Coach Darryl Sutter spread the credit to include All-Star goaltender Jonathan Quick. “We had two big plays there. [Quick] had a big save on Donskoi just before that,” Sutter said. “Played a heck of a game.”
After Game 4 at SAP Center, the series goes back to Los Angeles for Game 5 on Friday.
Quick was dialed in after giving up an early goal, by Joe Thornton on the Sharks’ first shot of the game, just 30 seconds in.
“Everything trickles down from him, Jon, his attitude,” Brown said of Quick. “He has a swagger about him and when he’s dialed in, it’s almost like a momentum swing, really. We’ve seen it in the past with him where he makes saves and the other team just dips a little bit.”
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