Adrian Kempe scored two goals and Anton Forsberg stopped 24 of 25 shots as the Los Angeles Kings gave their playoff hopes a huge boost with a 4-1 victory over the visiting Vancouver Canucks on Thursday night.
Trevor Moore and Joel Armia scored goals and Artemi Panarin had two assists for the Kings, who vaulted past the Nashville Predators in the race for the final wild-card berth in the Western Conference.
With just four games left in the regular season, the Kings have 85 points, just one point ahead of Nashville, who lost 4-1 to the Utah Mammoth earlier Thursday. The Kings also have a game in hand on the Predators.
Defenseman Marcus Pettersson scored and Nikita Tolopilo made 22 saves for the Canucks, who lost their fourth straight game.
The Kings had been struggling of late to get good starts. But they showed no signs of that on Thursday, blitzing the Canucks early and scoring just 89 seconds in when Kempe one-timed a shot through the legs of Tolopilo after taking a pass from Brandt Clarke.
Vancouver tied it 1-1 on a lucky bounce at 14:17 of the first period. Pettersson’s slap shot was going wide but it hit the left skate of Los Angeles defenseman Brian Dumoulin and deflected in.
The Kings regained the lead 2-1 just 91 seconds later after Jared Wright forced a turnover by knocking down Canucks forward Jake DeBrusk in the neutral zone. Scott Laughton carried the puck into the Canucks’ zone and dropped it to Armia, who fired it past the glove hand of Tolopilo.
Kempe scored his second of the game and team-leading 34th of the year with just 29 seconds left in the second to make it 3-1. Kempe tipped a shot pass from Joel Edmundson while gliding through the slot as the Kings took advantage of another sloppy turnover by the Canucks in their own zone.
Los Angeles native Moore scored at 9:17 of the third to make it 4-1 as a long shot from the point deflected off the stick of Vancouver defenseman Elias Pettersson and then glanced off Moore’s shoulder and in.
The Kings and Canucks meet once more in the final week of the regular season to close out their four-game season series.
