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 s...

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