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  Friday, Mar. 17 8:30pm ET
Defense making life easy for Turek
 
  RECAP | BOX SCORE

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- After one win in 17 games against St. Louis, the Los Angeles Kings thought it was time to get physical.

Bad decision.

Marc Bergevin and Luc Robitaille
St. Louis' Marc Bergevin puts on the brakes as he approaches Luc Robitaille.
Inspired by the Kings' attempt to intimidate, the Blues rolled to a club-record 24th road victory, 4-0 on Friday night.

Michal Handzus scored two goals and Roman Turek earned his league-leading sixth shutout.

"They're a very good team and they play hard," Handzus said. "They finish every check. It was a little rough in the first period, but it helped our team get going. We got a little mad and started playing hockey."

Turek made 31 saves en route to his eighth career shutout, extending his personal unbeaten streak to seven games and ending the Kings' four-game unbeaten streak. The victory was his 37th of the season, breaking the franchise record set by Curtis Joseph in 1993-94.

"Turek has always been a very solid goalie," Kings coach Andy Murray said. "They're a real solid team, but he really bails them out."

"Obviously, the biggest thing is goaltending," Chris Pronger said. "Roman's done a great job, and the forwards have done a great job in giving backside pressure. When they do that, we're allowed to stand up, create turnovers and go the other way. And we get a lot of our offense from that."

Rookie Jochen Hecht also scored, Pavol Demitra had an empty-net goal and Lubos Bartecko had three assists for the Blues.

St. Louis leads the league with eight shutouts and has surrendered a league-low 143 goals.

"It was quite a defensive struggle there for a while, but our patience and our ability to stick to the game plan finally won through for us," Pronger said. "We always have very close battles with them, but we always seem to pull it out."

The Kings had not been shut out in 91 games, but were playing their first game since losing Ziggy Palffy -- tied for the team scoring lead -- for 2-4 weeks with a sprained right shoulder.

The Blues improved the NHL's best record to 45-17-9, and can break the league mark for road wins in a season by winning their remaining five away games.

Handzus opened the scoring at 6:27 of the second period. Demitra, along the right boards inside the Kings blue line, spun around with a pass that found Handzus a few feet from the crease.

Handzus' shot crawled through goalie Jamie Storr's pads and slowly across the goal line.

Bartecko, who left the game temporarily after Kings defenseman Rob Blake sent him head-first into the boards in the first period, also assisted.

Storr let in another soft goal just 72 seconds later. The Kings won a faceoff inside their blue line, but rookie defenseman Jere Karalahti coughed up the puck to Blues rookie Marty Reasoner.

He passed the puck in front of the net to Hecht, whose soft wrist shot found room between Storr's pads.

Handzus added his 24th goal with 12:22 remaining, as he banged home a rebound of Bartecko's shot from the right circle.
 


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RECAPS
Washington 4
Carolina 2

Tampa Bay 3
New Jersey 1

St. Louis 4
Los Angeles 0

Edmonton 4
Ottawa 2

Nashville 4
Phoenix 3

Anaheim 4
San Jose 2