Kings shut down the Nashville Predators, 4-0

A road game for Nic Dowd definitely had a home feeling to it.

Peter Budaj made 28 saves and Dowd, a Huntsville, Ala., native, scored to lead the Kings to a 4-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Thursday night.

Nick Shore, Jeff Carter and Devin Setoguchi also scored for the Kings. Playing the sixth game of a season-long nine-game road swing, they improved their record to 3-2-1 on the trip.

Budaj earned his fourth shutout of the season and 15th of his career.

“I felt good tonight, I was seeing the puck well,” Budaj said. “The guys were doing a great job blocking shots. It always helps because Nashville is known for getting shots from the point and then trying to jam the net and just try to get the second, third opportunities. We eliminated that.”

The Kings have not given up a power-play goal in eight consecutive games. In killing off three Nashville power plays, the Kings allowed just three shots on goal in the six minutes they were short-handed.

“We’re limiting the number of penalties that we take, [that] obviously helps, two or three a game,” Kings Coach Darryl Sutter said. “We have good centermen that are pretty good penalty killers. There’s no secret to it.”

Shore scored the game’s first goal at 6 minutes 33 seconds of the opening period.

The score remained 1-0 into the third, when Dowd and Carter scored nine seconds apart.

Dowd, who grew up 100 miles south of Nashville, connected from the left faceoff circle at 4:25 with a wrist shot that squeezed just underneath Pekka Rinne’s leg pad.

Several of Dowd’s family members made the trip north to see him play his first NHL game in Nashville. “Minus the goal, I think just playing here in general, I was just excited to be around my family and get to see them after,” Dowd said. “Very few times all five of them, six of them are going to be able to see me play at once.”

KINGS TONIGHT

AT DALLAS

When: 5:30 PST.

On the air: TV: FS West; Radio: 790.

Update: Kings wing Tyler Toffoli missed Thursday’s game with a lower-body injury and is day to day, according to the team. Dustin Brown returned to the lineup from injury and was reunited with former linemate Anze Kopitar.

-- Curtis Zupke