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Ducks Clap On Against Kings

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

There’s power in the Mighty Duck power play again, and it turned off the Kings’ lights Tuesday night.

Now the Kings are stumbling around, trying to find a switch in the Pacific Division darkness.

A second-period goal by Vitaly Vishnevski, with the Kings’ Bryan Smolinski in the penalty box, sent the Ducks winging to a 5-3 victory, and started a miserable 9:09 that ended in goalie Stephane Fiset’s joining the announced 18,118 spectators at Staples Center.

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From Vishnevski’s goal, his first in the NHL, through scores by Oleg Tverdovsky, Steve Rucchin and Paul Kariya, Fiset watched teammates’ support in front of him crumble into mistakes, misplays and misfortune, most of it because of their own considerable misadventures.

It could have been worse. Fiset turned aside Matt Cullen’s breakaway at 15:59, an effort that was followed by Luc Robitaille’s holding penalty, which was followed by Rucchin’s power-play goal for the Mighty Ducks.

Robitaille’s hold and Rucchin’s holding his hands aloft were separated by only 10 seconds, time enough for Kariya to send a pass to Teemu Selanne, who dealt it to Rucchin in open ice in front of Fiset.

The ice was open because Rucchin said goodbye to the Kings’ Jason Blake.

Selanne has an eight-game point streak.

The Mighty Ducks have scored power-play goals in their last five games and have won three and tied two of them. They were the NHL’s best with a man advantage a season ago but had labored among the league’s dregs for the first half of the season.

They have nine power-play goals over those five games.

What you see setting in the West isn’t the sun. It’s the Kings, who have a problem with geography. They have beaten the Ducks only once in the last two seasons--that, at last season’s end--and have to play them four more times in their last 30 games.

The Kings are 3-10-1 in the Pacific Division, and without points from their neighbors, the opportunity to continue to play after the regular season ends is severely impaired.

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The Ducks were certainly efficient, with Cullen giving them a 1-0 lead only 2:49 into the game on their first shot.

By then, the Kings had tested Anaheim goalie Guy Hebert three times.

Cullen’s goal was countered by one by Jozef Stumpel on a King power play, and was scored back-handed when Garry Galley sent him a pass.

Tight checking remained the game’s signature through most of the first period and into the second, much as it was when the teams tied, 1-1, in their first meeting, in December.

Hips and elbows were exchanged, one of the elbows being that of Blake, which was applied to the jaw of Hebert, knocking him down for an eight-count.

Hebert rose to finish his 29-save effort, about his norm against the Kings, whom he owns.

Vishnevski, the Ducks’ first choice in the 1998 entry draft and the fifth pick overall, has gotten limited power-play time, but he made the most of it in breaking the tie at 9:51 of the second period.

He took a pass from Kip Miller and launched a shot from 40 feet, with Ted Donato and Galley screening Fiset.

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From there, in rapid-fire order came the scores by Tverdovsky and Rucchin, and Kariya punctuated the outburst by taking a Rucchin pass and breaking away from the pack.

Tverdovsky also has an eight-game point streak.

Kariya sent the puck through Fiset’s legs to make it 5-1, and Hebert made sure it stayed that way when he stared down Rob Blake, who was trying to score on a two-on-one with the Ducks’ Ruslan Salei between him and Ziggy Palffy.

Palffy sent a pass to Blake, whose shot rang off the post.

Exit Fiset, enter Jamie Storr, for the first time since Jan. 26.

He announced his arrival by handling Kariya’s shot on yet another Duck two-on-one in the period’s opening minute, and heartened by that effort, the Kings picked up a power-play goal by Glen Murray and a goal by Smolinski off a rebound of a Jason Blake shot.

It was too little, too late for the Kings, who slipped to eighth place in the Western Conference, which is where they stop counting when playoff time begins. The Ducks, on the other hand, flew into ninth, only a point behind the Kings with those four more neighborhood meetings to look forward to.

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