A few takeaways from the Kings’ 5-1 win over the Vancouver Canucks

The special teams can be, well, special: Not only did the Kings take the lead on Anze Kopitar’s second-period power-play goal — the team’s third goal in two games with the man advantage — but they also killed off five Vancouver power plays.

“Obviously, the power play has been scoring a lot lately, so we’ve been pretty happy with that,” defenseman Drew Doughty said. “But our penalty kills have been something that we’ve been a little concerned that we haven’t been where we need to be. And tonight we were.”

The Kings came into the game having allowed 44 power-play goals; only six teams have allowed more. Five of those goals came in two losses to the front-running Anaheim Ducks. Not coincidentally, those are the only two games the Kings have lost in the past 2 ½ weeks.

“Our penalty kill has been good, other than two games against Anaheim,” Coach Darryl Sutter said. “I know there are critics, but those critics weren’t very good penalty killers either.”

The missing offense — and Jeff Carter — may have been found: Carter scored as many or more goals in the final nine minutes Monday as the team has scored as a unit in nine of its 10 previous games. Carter’s second goal, into an empty net, was the 300th of his career, and it came on his ninth shot of the game, a team high for the season. Kopitar also had two assists to go with his goal, giving him the fourth three-point game of the season.

Carter’s outburst, which ended a slump that had seen him score just twice in the past 21 games — came after a move to right wing.

“Just take a little pressure off Jeff,” Sutter said in explaining the change. “Trying to not necessarily get him going, but take him out of that center routine. It worked tonight. Good for him.”

As for the milestone goal, Sutter added: “That’s a lot of goals. If you think about it, that’s a lot of goals. Hopefully he’s got a couple hundred more in him.”

Motivational speaking: The Kings led the Ducks by 16 points on Jan. 20, but fell out of the Pacific Division league by losing to Anaheim last week. Consider that a wake-up call. Doughty said the fact that the Kings are following the leaders rather than being the leaders has been a source of motivation as the stretch drive for playoff seeding begins.

“It was a pretty heartbreaking loss against the Ducks,” he said. “We wanted that win and we wanted to be at the top of our division, and after that, we obviously weren’t. So we knew that we needed to catch up to them, and we needed to start that off by winning tonight and we were able to. We need to continue to do that.”