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Kings blame themselves for loss, but aren’t distraught

Drew Doughty

Drew Doughty

AP

After losing Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final, New York goaltender Henrik Lundqvist lamented that the Rangers weren’t getting any puck luck.

Tonight it was the Rangers that seemed to get the big breaks, but Kings captain Dustin Brown didn’t want to blame their 2-1 loss on that.

“We make our own bounces,” Brown said, adding that the team wasn’t good enough to win this one, according to NHL.com’s Cörey Masisak.

Drew Doughty echoed Brown’s sentiments when asked if he was frustrated about the puck that stopped just before the Rangers’ goal line late in the game.

“Yeah, there’s two of them like that and two of them where we should have been better around the net and two of them that we should have put in,” Doughty said, per LA Kings Insider. “Those were the difference in the game. We had tons of opportunities. We should have scored more goals and that’s really the only reason we lost.”

Fortunately for them, they put themselves in a position where they’ll get another chance to win it all on Friday. And if not, there’s always Monday. Or next Wednesday.

“We wanted to close it out tonight, and we didn’t do it,” Anze Kopitar said. “But now we’re going home, and we’re going to try to close it there.”

That’s the nearly insurmountable thing about a 3-0 series deficit. For every 2014 Kings, there are literally 78 squads that couldn’t overcome that disadvantage. The New York Rangers are the 115th of 317 teams that have won Game 4 when down 3-0 and only four of those other teams actually completed their comeback, per WhoWins.com.

So there’s no reason for the Kings to be too down on themselves, especially after they out shot New York 15-1 in the third period.

“We have full confidence in this team, in our team no matter what,” Doughty said. “We had an OK effort tonight, but OK isn’t good enough against this team. So now we just need to come out with our best effort of the series. And if we do, I’m pretty confident that we will win that game.”

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