Kings’ 5-0 win over Colorado is a shared experience

Reporting from Denver —

The Kings saved their best effort of a tough trip for last, in the process issuing a powerful statement about their character and capabilities.

With a defensive effort that players declared their most complete of the season, the Kings overpowered the Avalanche, 5-0, Tuesday at the Pepsi Center, ending Colorado’s six-game winning streak and becoming the first team to shut out the NHL’s highest-scoring club.

The Kings began this journey with a 5-0 victory at Detroit built on a 51-save effort by Jonathan Quick. He was good again Tuesday in a 23-save performance that became his third shutout this season and 11th of his career, but he didn’t have to be spectacular in bookending this trip with a triumph by the same score.

“In the Detroit game we relied too much on Jonathan there and he played awesome but I think tonight was more of a team game top to bottom,” said defenseman Rob Scuderi, whose first-period goal was his first since Oct. 4, 2008 and first in 105 games with the Kings.

“Every single line, every single D pairing had a real solid game. Probably our best team game of the season.”

Quick agreed. “It’s always good to get a shutout but I think tonight is a great team game,” he said. “We played 60 minutes, start to finish.”

Which hasn’t always happened this season and wasn’t the case in their losses at St. Louis and at Chicago. A performance like this, so thorough and thoroughly convincing, with three goals in the third, could be a turning point if they maintain this level of resolve.

Colorado was bowled over by the physicality of Dustin Brown, who tied a career-high with four points on two goals and two assists, and Anze Kopitar, formidable all night.

“The third period was our best period out of the three, and when you’re playing those five games like we have on the road and you come back and play the third period that’s a big buy-in by everybody,” Coach Terry Murray said after his team finished the trip with a 3-2 record and —oddly — five-goal margins in each win, including the 6-1 rout at Nashville on Saturday.

Defense was a team effort but the scoring burden was also shared and included contributions from players whose goals are rare.

Scuderi started things by converting his own rebound for his first goal since he played for the Pittsburgh Penguins in a European season opener in 2008. “I got a high percentage in Sweden, not so much in the United States,” he said. “I’ll take them any way they come.”

Richardson scored his fifth goal of the season and fourth against Colorado with a tip-in during the second period, and Brown capped a sterling effort by scoring twice in the third. He converted the rebound after a ferocious drive to the net and shot by Kopitar was stopped by goalie Craig Anderson at 7:27, and he cut from the left side to the middle for a long wrist shot at 15:03, with assists to Ryan Smyth and Scuderi.

Everyone was in sync while backchecking, forechecking and while doing postgame pushups in the locker room.

“Quickie had to make maybe two really difficult saves and he made them,” Brown said. “I think that’s been our best 60 minutes, especially on the defensive side of the puck.”

Their penalty killing was perfect, their power play produced a goal by Justin Williams at 17:49 of the third and left wing Marco Sturm played a decent 11 minutes and 42 seconds in his first game since last May 1.

“In retrospect taking three is good,” Brown said. “I think we’re a little disappointed in our efforts especially in St. Louis and Chicago. We had points, probably, there if we played a little better. But looking back now, not bad.”

Not at all, and the best came last.

helene.elliott@latimes.com

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