VANCOUVER, Canada — A season hangs in delicate balance.
Well, not quite.
Forget delicate. This is hockey, after all.
Things remained typically murky in the Western Conference race for the Kings after the Canucks beat them, 1-0, at Rogers Arena on Monday. Vancouver, playing without concussed star Daniel Sedin, needed only a first-period goal by forward Manny Malhotra, who, incidentally, had not scored in 14 games.
On Thursday, the Kings were riding high after grabbing the lead in the Pacific Division and the No. 3 spot in the West. After 60 minutes of tight checking and a late-arriving offensive surge Monday, they slipped out of a playoff spot.
It was the 10th time the Kings have been shut out this season, and it happened to be the fourth shutout of the season for Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo, who made 38 saves. Vancouver has won three straight games since Sedin suffered his concussion against Chicago last week, taking an elbow in the head from Duncan Keith.
The Kings, who have lost two in a row, slipped to ninth place in the West with 86 points, still tied with Colorado but ahead on the tiebreaker and one point in front of Calgary. San Jose has 88 points and Dallas and Phoenix have 87.
"It makes every game mean that much more," said Kings forward Dustin Penner, who was one of the few players with any jump in the first two periods. "We have that much less room for error."
Penner ran down a summary of the Kings' final six games of the season, four of which are on the road. They play at Calgary on Wednesday. "A clean sweep of those six would feel pretty good," he said.
Said Kings Coach Darryl Sutter: "You've got to really bear down on the opportunities, right? It's the same as playoffs. You get so many chances, but you've got to bear down. You can say they scored a bad goal but at the same time. ... "
That would be a rare shaky goal allowed by Jonathan Quick, who was beaten on the glove side up high by Malhotra from the left circle 3 minutes 5 seconds into the game.
By the time the Kings' offense got untracked, Luongo was at his sharpest. One of the best chances came with about 41/2 minutes remaining when Anze Kopitar nearly put in a nifty deflection off linemate Dustin Brown's backhander, only to be stymied by Luongo.
"It was too little too late," Kopitar said. "We have to find a way to win. Quickie is giving us a chance all night and we just didn't find a way to score. I definitely thought I had a chance and he made a good save on it. He tracked it down pretty good."
The Kings have scored two goals in their last three games.
Said Sutter: "It was a hard game for us because we were coming off those two really physical games and you can see there wasn't a lot of energy in our game but we were doing everything right. Just trying to dig down in there. Tough one."
The Kings weren't helped by two dubious calls. Forward Kyle Clifford was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct in the second period when he sprayed a decent amount of ice on Luongo when he was trying to stop from running into the goalie.
Then Penner was hit with an interference on the goaltender call with 3:23 left in the game, undercutting the Kings' momentum.
"I think the word they used to describe that is chintzy," Penner said. "Considering the time. You know, he was knocked over by his own guy and his guy cross-checked me into him. I know a little bit better than that than to go into a goalie with three minutes left."
lisa.dilman@latimes.com
twitter.com/reallisa
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
0 意見:
Post a Comment