Kings’ Jonathan Quick, Chicago’s Corey Crawford have had their moments

With so many bodies in the crease, someone bumped Jonathan Quick just hard enough to nudge him off-angle on the first shot.

The Kings goalie could not control the rebound and, when a second shot came his way from closer range, skittering past his right shoulder, he looked beaten.

The best he could do was reach back and hope.

“I was just trying to cover the net,” he said. “You’ve got to get lucky sometimes.”

Add the desperate maneuver — he somehow stopped the shot with the inside of his blocker — to a career’s worth of highlights for Quick. The last-minute save preserved Tuesday’s 3-1 over the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals.

As much as the Kings needed the win — climbing back into this best-of-seven series, behind 2-1 — Quick needed it too, after surrendering four goals in 17 shots and being chased from Game 2 last weekend.

The veteran acknowledged: “It was good.”

This has been an interesting series for goaltenders. Quick came in as the reigning star, the guy who won the Conn Smythe Trophy (most valuable player in the playoffs) while leading the Kings to the Stanley Cup last season. After a shaky start to the postseason — a stickhandling error led to an overtime goal for St. Louis — he had regained form.

But over the last week, focus shifted to the other end of the ice.

Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford started grabbing headlines with a 1.70 goals-against average in the playoffs, tops in the league. It didn’t hurt his image when, during Game 2, he stepped into the middle of a fight and put a bear hug on the Kings’ Kyle Clifford.

“He’s playing great and then sticking up for his teammates too,” Blackhawks winger Patrick Kane said. “What more can a guy do?”

Once considered a weak link, Crawford was suddenly being compared to Quick.

Just like his counterpart, the Quebec native was less than amazing during his first two forays in the postseason. Maybe, like Quick, he could catch lightning in a bottle the third time?

Crawford’s mental game has improved, teammates say. That might sound like mumbo-jumbo, but when your job involves stopping a vulcanized rubber disk at 100 miles an hour, concentration can be vital.

And if the media continued to overlook him, he did not care.

“I don’t think it really matters, to be honest, whether people are talking about my performance or not,” he said. “It doesn’t change what I have to do.”

Still, he acknowledged thinking about the comparisons.

“You want to beat the other guy on the other side,” he said. “My focus is more on their players, what they’re doing but, yeah, I definitely want to beat him.”

Which made Game 2 all the more significant.

Crawford played solidly, and occasionally better than that. When the puck took an odd bounce, he jumped out from goal and smothered an opportunity for Kings winger Tyler Toffoli.

His steadiness contrasted with Quick’s struggles, moments when the Kings goalie drifted out of position as shots zipped past on both sides.

The Kings are a physical team that often relies on defense. Fairly or not, they need their goalie to save them every once in a while.

Quick, whose goals-against average in the postseason is 1.71, readily accepts this burden and has always taken the blame for losses. Getting run in the second period did not sit well with him. “Obviously he’d love to have a couple of those goals back,” Coach Darryl Sutter said.

Even so, teammates saw no lingering effects when the Kings got back to Los Angeles.

“He’s able to turn the page, he’s a strong mental guy,” defenseman Rob Scuderi said. “I don’t think we’re ever worried about him.”

If Game 3 changed momentum, the defense deserves credit, slowing Chicago in the neutral zone, keeping the puck to the sides and making Quick work hard on only a few occasions.

Jonathan Toews flew at him in the second period, unleashing a wrist shot. Quick batted it aside and pounced on top of Toews when the Chicago center slid into the crease. Later, during a penalty kill, Quick fought through a crowd to get his glove on a loose puck.

The only shot that eluded him came from winger Bryan Bickell, who was left alone to skate from behind the net for a wraparound. The sequence bothered Quick, who sniffed, “There’s some things I would like to clean up for the next game.”

At the other end, Crawford lamented an off-speed, broken-stick shot from Kings defenseman Slava Voynov that slithered past the goalie for the game-winner.

“Just the fact that the puck came so slow to the net, I just slid out of position,” he said, adding: “I’ve just got to be ready for something like that next time.”

With the series resuming Thursday night at Staples Center, both goalies figure to remain in the spotlight.

Crawford will look to regain the initiative. As for Quick, his team might once again need him to be a difference-maker.

“It’s like a broken record,” winger Justin Williams said. “We keep saying, ‘Yeah, it was a big save.’ There’s not much more you can say.”

david.wharton@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATimesWharton