Kyle Clifford scored the Kings’ first regulation goal in more than 170 minutes, Johnson snapped a personal 17-game goal drought, and Los Angeles emphatically emerged from its scoring slump in a 5-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Monday night.

The Kings are 6-1-3 in the Darryl Sutter era, but this was the first time since he has taken over as coach that they have managed to score five goals. Of late, they have been particularly offensively challenged, scoring just twice in their previous three games.

The Capitals had totaled 16 goals in their previous five games, but the Kings kept them -- and Ovechkin in particular -- bottled up fairly well. Ovechkin finished with three shots on goal in 22-plus minutes of ice time. To be certain, the Kings benefited from the absence of Nicklas Backstrom and Mike Green, but slowing down Ovechkin was critical, and the Kings did a good job.

utter went with Drew Doughty and Rob Scuderi almost exclusively against Alexander Ovechkin's line, which was held scoreless. Washington has lost its past 13 games (0-12-1) when Ovechkin has gone pointless, but it was poor play by Washington in its own zone that led to L.A.'s first two goals.

Alex Ovechkin was involved in continual shoving matches with several Kings, most regularly Mike Richards, with whom the left winger has a history of altercations dating from the world junior championship in 2005. Those checks and that energy didn’t seem to fuel Washington as much as it did the Kings.

“There’s definitely some chemistry there. You look down our whole lineup, from Kopi, Richie and Lokti’s lines, and our line, there’s definitely some chemistry brewing throughout each line. I think every night the lines have been very strong." – Kyle Clifford, on the chemistry his line is developing.

"It was important to score some goals. We didn't score one goal in regulation in two games, which was pretty frustrating. We need to pay back our goalies. They've been playing out of this world and (we need) to give them some breathing room." – Jack Johnson, on the team finally scoring.

"They scored all the goals the same way, going to the front of the net, stopping around the net, rebound plays. They’re all capable of doing that. … It’s good to score. It’s good for those guys. And we got it from all the lines. It wasn’t like it was one guy, or just the guys who usually do that stuff.” – Darryl Sutter, on the five goals.

"I said a couple things to him. I understand he's just trying to be funny. It's kind of a stupid celebration. It's like those guys in the World Juniors riding their stick, giving high-fives across the bench. It was over after that. A couple of shifts we were saying a few things, but that was it." – Karl Alzner, on Johnson's Tebowing antics.