Quinn Hit Late Penalty Shot Just Right : NHL: Melrose looks good for choice of player to challenge goalie in third period.

He stood at center ice, heart beating furiously, the game on the line.

Dan Quinn was exhausted, having finished a long, perhaps 90-second-long shift but now he had a chance to rescue the Kings from defeat.

Given a crack at a penalty shot after Bob Corkum of the Mighty Ducks intentionally shoved the net off its moorings, Quinn went straight at goaltender Mikhail Shtalenkov. He didn’t make a move, didn’t fake left or right, simply flipped the puck into the net.

The next 1 minute 7 seconds and overtime passed in scoreless fashion and the Kings emerged with a 3-3 tie against the Ducks Tuesday night at The Pond.

“All I thought of was No. 1, the ice was very bad,” Quinn said after scoring his sixth goal in the last eight games. “I didn’t want to deke him and I didn’t want to go upstairs.”

He attacked the left side of the net, sending his shot past Shtalenkov no more than a foot off the ice.

What was going through Quinn’s head as he raced alone toward the net?

“A little bit of everything,” he said after attempting his first NHL penalty shot. “I stayed committed once I went down the ice.”

Quinn overcame his fatigue and made Coach Barry Melrose look smart for picking him. Rick Tocchet was the other likely choice, but Melrose offered no other explanation for Quinn than “he’s good on breakaways.”

Then, taking a light-hearted jab at reporters, Melrose said, “Who should have taken it? You guys tell me. If he had missed it you all would have written who should have taken it.”

Reminded that Tocchet, the Kings’ leading scorer with 14 goals, is no stiff, Melrose simply smiled and kept teasing reporters. “You guys should pick it.”

King assistant coach Cap Raeder watched the replay and found no fault with Shtalenkov’s play on the penalty shot.

“It was a great shot,” Raeder said. “You’re not going to stop that. There’s nothing you can do when you put it there.”

The Kings have seen both sides of the call that results in a penalty shot if the net is knocked off intentionally in the game’s final two minutes.

Against Detroit on Feb. 12, the Kings’ Michel Petit did just what Corkum did Tuesday, desperately trying to avoid a goal in overtime. Red Wing Sergei Fedorov, who had already scored four goals, took the penalty shot, but Kelly Hrudey stopped him with a brilliant save to preserve a 4-4 tie.

“You have to have (the rule) at that time in the game,” Melrose said. “That takes away a goal in the last minute of a game. We’ve been burned by it once and benefited from it once.”

Hrudey, the only player on the ice besides Quinn and Shtalenkov, had this to say:

“It’s a good call. It makes it exciting for the fans. And we scored a goal.”

Wayne Gretzky, who wasn’t on the ice when the infraction occurred and wasn’t eligible to take the shot said: “It was a blatant penalty.”