Additionally, five minute majors for fighting were issued to Bieksa and Andreoff, as well as to Rickard Rakell and Kris Versteeg. The Kings have given up 13 power-play goals over their past 14 games…. The Kings are looking to snap Anaheim’s 10-game win streak.
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Both of their goals came on the power play, but they lost despite a 34-22 shot advantage.
“When you lose a game like this, the biggest game of the year up to this point, it’s a hard one to swallow, and you just have to bounce back as quick as you can with only 18 games left”, Lucic said.
His numbers are considerably better against the Canucks (25-27-2), with a 1.64 GAA in 29 career regular-season matchups and 1.07 mark in the past 13 – a stretch in which he’s posted three shutouts and hasn’t allowed more than two goals.
“The majority of the time, special teams are the difference”.
Kings center Anze Kopitar was more critical of his team’s performance against the new divisional leaders. “You can always execute better than we did, but it was a hard-fought game with a lot of emotions”. But the Ducks overtook the Kings for first place Saturday thanks in part to the spark Rakell provided in that fight, as well as the offense he provided in the Ducks’ 3-2 victory over the goal-starved Kings at Staples Center.
What began as a routine collision along the boards between Kyle Clifford and Ducks leading goal-scorer Corey Perry in the Los Angeles zone at 6:58 of the first period turned into a shoving match between them – then escalated into a free-for-all that resulted in 66 penalty minutes in one fell swoop.
Shea Weber and Miikka Salomaki added empty-netters. One was by Milan Lucic in the second period to tie the game 1-1, and the second was in the third period by Drew Doughty to make the Kings goal deficit by one.
Blake Comeau and Gabriel Landeskog had goals and Calvin Pickard made 35 saves for the Avalanche. Joe Colborne scored his 11th and Mark Giordano his 16th for the Flames, who won in Pittsburgh for the first time in more than a decade. Defensemen Kevin Bieksa for the Ducks and forward Andrew Andreoff are the first ones to start throwing punches and they are both given game misconducts and the referees seem to get everything back under control.
The Winnipeg Jets were too good for the Montreal Canadiens 4-2, the Calgary Flames beat the Pittsburgh Penguins by the same scoreline, the Nashville Predators trumped the Colorado Avalanche 5-2 and the Minnesota Wild prevailed 3-2 in a shoot-out against the Buffalo Sabres. Marc-Andre Fleury made 26 saves for Pittsburgh.
Eichel and Johan Larsson scored in regulation for Buffalo. Jonathan Quick stopped 19 shots in the defeat. It was symbolic of how the Ducks have been willing to take on new roles and shift their thinking, retrenching to play a defensive mode that has given them new life. Then came four consecutive power-play goals, two by each team.
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The victory, though, was tempered by the loss of captain Henrik Sedin, who suffered an upper-body injury early in the first period after taking a forearm to the chest.
