Shootout Is OK for Kings

After all the up-and-back skating, all the chippy play and all the oh-so-close moments, Friday night’s game between the Mighty Ducks and the Kings came down to a simple contest.

Who had the best French-Canadian goaltender?

The Kings’ Mathieu Garon took home the Quebec bragging rights for one night, stopping both shots he faced in a 4-3 shootout victory over the Mighty Ducks in front of an announced sellout crowd of 17,114 at the Arrowhead Pond.

Garon survived a poor attempt by Teemu Selanne, then extended himself, getting his right leg on a shot by Scott Niedermayer. Goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who got the Ducks to overtime by stopping Pavol Demitra on a breakaway with 32 seconds left, allowed goals by Demitra and Alexander Frolov in the shootout.

“There seems to be so many good goalies [who] come out of that [Quebec] junior league and a lot of them play the same way,” the Kings’ Eric Belanger said. “But did you see Matty do the splits on that [Niedermayer] save? Every time he does that, I hurt for him. If I tried that, I’d break my leg.”

The Ducks were a little less jubilant about the provincial goaltender showdown. They are now 0-6 in overtime games this season, including three shootout losses. This time they wasted a chance to creep closer to the Kings, who had lost seven of 10 games and were only four points ahead of the 10th-place Ducks in the Western Conference.

“I was the most positive goalie at the beginning of the year about those shootouts,” said Giguere, who stopped 34 of 37 shots in regulation and overtime. “I was pretty excited about them. I’ve just got to keep working at it.”

The victory enabled the Kings to leapfrog Edmonton back into sixth place in the West, slowing a descent that had seen them tumble from second place in the last three weeks.

“Mathieu gave us a big win,” center Craig Conroy said. “This is the kind of victory that can turn things around.”

The game had a brisk pace and some gritty moments, with a few scrums and a couple of wayward sticks -- Selanne took one near the eye in the second period.

After all that, the game was left in the goaltenders’ creases.

“I was glad to see our first two players scoring goals,” said Garon, who made a season-high 42 saves. “It makes it much easier for me.”

The long day’s journey into shootout began with a couple of pregame adjustments for the Kings.

Veteran Luc Robitaille was scratched from the lineup, only the sixth time in his career that he had been held out for non-health reasons.

Petr Kanko, called up from Manchester on Friday, replaced Robitaille and scored the tying goal 5 minutes 26 seconds into the third period.

Kanko, making his NHL debut, got the Kings even on a ricochet. He dodged a Duck player and fired a pass from behind the net that went off defenseman Keith Carney’s skate and past Giguere. In the first period the Kings’ Derek Armstrong had swatted a puck that went off defenseman Ruslan Salei’s skate and into the net.

“We need a win any way we can find them,” King Coach Andy Murray said.

Murray, faced with a team slipping in the standings and a dressing room that has a few unhappy players, gave motivation the old college try Thursday, reading a quote by Detroit Red Wing veteran Steve Yzerman about accepting a lesser role to help the team.

Whether or not the there’s-no-I-in-Yzerman speech resonated, the Kings did bolt to a 2-0 lead in the first period. They put in a good 16 minutes to start the game, getting power-play goals from Armstrong and Dustin Brown, before Petr Sykora, Todd Marchant and Joffrey Lupul scored to put the Ducks ahead.