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LOS ANGELES — It’s doubtful that St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong was basing important decisions about the future of the franchise on the bounce of a puck Wednesday night at Crypto.com Arena.

A game against the Los Angeles Kings was the Blues’ last before the NHL trade deadline at 3 p.m. (ET) Friday. A win would keep them just one point back of the No. 2 wild card in the Western Conference standings. A loss could have meant putting more thought into the phone calls that will continue to come on captain Brayden Schenn and perhaps others.

It may not have been the result — a 3-2 shootout victory over L.A. — that mattered most to Armstrong. The game could have gone either way.

But what might make up management’s mind and keep the lineup identical for Friday’s game in Anaheim, just hours after the deadline, is the way Jim Montgomery’s club continued to impress in keeping pace with the Calgary Flames (67 points) and Vancouver Canucks (67 points) in the battle for the second wild card.

In improving to 6-1-1 in their last eight games, the Blues showed resilience, purpose and a few other words that goalie Jordan Binnington picked out after they handed the Kings just their seventh loss in 26 games this season at home.

“I would say the word is fun and love,” Binnington said. “Love is building in the locker room playing for each other. That’s such a special part of being on a team. We can feel it building. We’ve just got to keep playing the right away every single day, every shift, bringing the right energy.

“We’ve been working hard, and I think we’ve been playing committed hockey for a couple of weeks, and it’s definitely showing. It looks like we’re tough to play against; we’re getting chances and we’re getting goals. That’s the way we want to play, as St. Louis Blues.”

In the NHL, the barometer for a team feeling good about itself is when the players are loud and engaging with one another at a morning skate, and one could see and hear that the moment the Blues stepped onto the rink Wednesday morning.

“There’s no doubt. You noticed it this morning, right?” Montgomery said to a reporter. “The smiles, the energy, there’s a belief in that room right now about what we can achieve.”

Two days after the Blues’ 6-3 defeat to the Dallas Stars, their first loss in regulation in nearly a month, they got the first goal of the game from Jake Neighbours, rallied from a 2-1 deficit on a power-play goal by Robert Thomas and received another brilliant performance from Binnington.

“I just love the fact that we dropped a game, and we went right back to who we are,” Montgomery said. “We went right back to our identity. That’s a credit to the dressing room and the leaders in the dressing room. It’s being committed to playing selfless hockey. There’s a lot of ways to describe it, but the way we’re playing, that’s our identity. We’re always working for each other.”

Neighbours and others echoed that after Wednesday’s win.

“Yeah, our energy coming to the rink every day, whether it’s a practice or a morning skate or a game, just the way we’re competing, it’s so fun to be a part of,” he said. “The swagger we’re playing with and the energy that we bring to the rink is just something we didn’t have early on in the year, and, man, it’s fun to be part of right now.”

The Blues had 20 hits against the Kings, blocked 19 shots and were 2 for 2 on the penalty kill after surrendering four power-play goals to Dallas.

“We’re finding that working hard is fun, and being in these high-intensity, high-compete games, they feel like playoff games for us,” Neighbours said. “We’re coming with the mindset every day like we need to win. The emotion on the bench when guys score, when guys block shots, when guys are hitting, we’re having a blast, and the results are coming from it.”

So why did it take so long for that to show up?

“We’ve always known that we’ve got a good group in here,” said Thomas, who extended his point streak to 11 games Wednesday. “We’re putting it together on the ice, and that’s just making it even better for our team, and the results are the results because of it. It’s just about building something.

“We feel like we were doing the right things; we just weren’t getting the results. You go away for break and come back with a fresh mindset and continue to build on that. It’s led to us playing some great hockey and it’s a lot of fun doing that.”

And when bad things are happening, the Blues are resilient.

On their first three power plays against L.A., they went 0 for 3 with just three shots, leading assistant coach Steve Ott to switch up the personnel on the two units.

“It worked, so good job by Steve Ott, and the players that went out and executed,” Montgomery said.

When Colton Parayko fell to the ice late in overtime, L.A.’s Trevor Moore went on a breakaway and Binnington made a game-saving stop to send it to a shootout.

“Binner make the save — that’s what was going through my mind,” Montgomery said of his goalie, who is 6-0-1 with a 2.24 goals-against average and a .921 save percentage in his past seven starts. “You look at all the big saves he made in the third and in overtime and the shootout, that’s just his ability to rise in big moments. That’s what always describes him best as to why he’s special.”

When Neighbours was the first one called up for the shootout, he remembered a conversation from earlier in the day with Blues goalie coach Dave Alexander, who does the scouting report for the team’s shooters on the opposition’s goalie. Neighbours executed it for the lead after Round 1.

“That’s Davey all day,” Neighbours said. “He pulled me aside before the game. We always prepare for moments like that, and he had a move that he liked, and it worked out.”

As a result, the Blues have put themselves in a position that few fans and media thought they’d be in just a couple of short weeks ago.

“We’ve got to believe, and we do in here,” Binnington said. “We’re working hard in practice, we’re paying attention in meetings and we’re trusting each other in the system that it’s going to work, and we’ve just got to keep doing that every day.”

Armstrong has said for many years that the team’s performance leading up to the trade deadline will tell him how to react. Have the players sent the message that he should keep them together?

“I think we’ve sent the message that we love each other, and we want to find a way in this locker room and build for right now and the future,” Binnington said. “I think the message is there, but all we can do is focus on what we can control and just do our best every single day. We’ve just got to get to the playoffs, and then I believe anything can happen.”

Added Neighbours: “Our job as players is just to compete. The position we’re in right now, every game is a playoff game and we’re looking at it like we can get in. You just continue to play the way we have been, continue to collect points and put ourselves in a good spot. That’s out of our territory, what happens at the deadline, but we’re going to continue to play hard and do our thing.”