Kings’ Losses Multiply, 2-1

The race is on.

No, not the battle for Southland hockey supremacy. The Mighty Ducks continued to rule the Kings with an iron fist during a 2-1 victory Wednesday before a sellout crowd of 17,174 at the Arrowhead Pond.

The race in question is for fourth place in the Western Conference. Once facing a double-digit deficit against the Phoenix Coyotes, the Ducks find themselves only five points behind this morning.

Funny what a five-game winning streak will do for a team.

And what eight losses in nine games with do for another.

But there is now a struggle for fourth place and home-ice advantage between the torrid Ducks and flailing Coyotes.

Only last month Coach Craig Hartsburg was saying the Ducks should aim for fifth place because that was a reasonable goal. Now, fourth appears firmly within the Ducks’ sights.

Certainly, Wednesday’s victory won’t go down as the Ducks’ finest performance of the season. They were outplayed for long stretches and forced to rely on goaltender Guy Hebert to bail them out at times.

Hebert made 33 saves as the Ducks were outshot, 34-14, in winning their fourth this season against the Kings.

Right wing Teemu Selanne, extending his point streak to 14 games and his goal-scoring streak to seven, and center Matt Cullen scored for the Ducks. Defenseman Rob Blake had the lone King goal.

At this point in the season, the Ducks will gladly accept a lackluster victory and move on. They have bigger concerns just ahead, staring with Friday’s game against the Nashville Predators.

Sunday’s game against the Detroit Red Wings figures to be a better test, particularly since it’s the Ducks’ first against a .500 team since defeating the Coyotes, 5-1, Feb. 14 at Phoenix.

The Red Wings are a mere three points ahead of the Ducks and will be without center Sergei Fedorov, who was suspended Wednesday for five games for a slashing incident last week against the New York Islanders.

To be sure, the Ducks will have to clean up their act between today and Sunday. But a victory Friday against Nashville will equal the franchise-best six-game winning streak, set in March 1996.

The Ducks appeared to have Wednesday’s game firmly in their grasp, holding a 2-0 lead midway through the second period.

But they lost track of Blake, who might or might not have been offside when he accepted a lead pass from Jozef Stumpel and whistled a slap shot past Hebert and into the net at 13:32.

Either way, Blake breathed much-needed life into the Kings with his seventh goal of the season.

After all, the Kings made a shambles of their enormous advantage in shots on net. Their power play was useless and they sputtered just as badly when skating five on five.

But the Kings managed to win a few key battles in the neutral zone and kept buzzing the Duck net.

The Ducks hardly made King goalie Stephane Fiset sweat at the other end of the ice, putting limited pressure on him.

The Ducks were outshot, 26-9, after 40 minutes, but the Kings relaxed for a moment at the worst possible time early in the second period.

That’s when Selanne pounced on a loose puck at the blue line, split the defense, slipped a pass to Travis Green on right wing, accepted a return feed and tipped the puck into the net.

Selanne’s power-play goal, and his team-leading 35th overall, gave the Ducks a 2-0 lead at 5:12.

Fiset never had a chance.

Blake then cut the advantage in half, giving the Kings some reason to hope entering the third period.

The Ducks led, 1-0, after one period, although it was difficult to figure out how it was possible.

For all of their faults, intensity certainly wasn’t a problem for the Kings at the start Wednesday. The Kings hit the Ducks, they skated alongside them at times and they outshot them, 13-3, in the first period.

The Kings simply couldn’t score.

The Ducks made the most of their one first-period scoring chance, breaking a scoreless tie on Cullen’s seventh goal at 8:21 of the first period.

Left wing Marty McInnis tipped the puck ahead to right wing Tomas Sandstrom, who sent a lead pass from the right wing to the left. Cullen, who outsprinted Donald Audette to the front of the King net, merely tapped Sandstrom’s pass past Fiset.