Kings Point to Missed Chance

A point was gained and a point was lost Saturday at Staples Center. A stone-faced team occupied one dressing room while down the hall, another smiled and laughed over a postgame pizza feast.

It sure wasn’t difficult to figure out which team had more at stake after the Kings and Mighty Ducks tied, 3-3, before an announced sellout of 18,118 at Staples Center.

The Kings are desperate for points, locked in a battle for one of the eight Western Conference playoff spots, so forgive them if they felt as if an extra point escaped their clutches.

“Right now, every point is golden,” King Coach Andy Murray said, trying to put on the best possible postgame spin. “It wouldn’t be right for me to say whether it was a point won or a point lost. I couldn’t really say right now.”

One point Saturday moved the ninth-place Kings to within three points of the seventh-place San Jose Sharks. The Kings play the Sharks on Monday at Staples and Tuesday at San Jose. The Kings defeated San Jose by scores of 4-1 and 1-0 on March 14 and 17.

The Phoenix Coyotes moved a point ahead of the Kings into eighth with a 7-4 victory over Edmonton, which remained in sixth.

The last-place Ducks are desperate for anything resembling improvement, so erasing deficits of 1-0 and 3-2 and rallying for a tie on defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky’s goal with 7:09 remaining in the third period was fine with them.

“I don’t know if I would call it stealing a point when you have to kill as many penalties as we did,” Duck Coach Guy Charron said, referring to a 7-4 edge in power plays for the Kings. “I think the game was handed to them. They just didn’t take advantage of it.”

No question, both teams rebounded from their dueling wipeouts of Wednesday. The Kings were thumped, 7-0, by the Oilers. The Ducks were hammered, 8-0, by the Dallas Stars.

Saturday, defenseman Jaroslav Modry gave the Kings a 1-0 lead 1:01 into the game. Defenseman Pascal Trepanier and winger German Titov scored 3:02 apart early in the second period to give the Ducks a 2-1 advantage.

Ziggy Palffy rallied the Kings with power-play goals late in the second period and early in the third. But Tverdovsky deflected defenseman Antti-Jussi Niemi’s shot from the left point past a helpless Felix Potvin for a 3-3 tie at 12:51 of the third.

Tverdovsky led a Duck rush down the middle of the ice, but lost control of the puck while trying to make a pass to the left wing. The puck went behind the net, but an errant King clearing pass ended up on Niemi’s stick at the point.

Niemi whistled a shot on net that Tverdovsky deflected past Potvin’s stick side. Potvin was leaning to his glove side and was crossed up on the play.

“I was forechecking,” Tverdovsky joked. “I think it was the first tip-in of my career. I score. I shoot from the slot. But I don’t tip pucks.”

Tverdovsky, who suffered a concussion Wednesday, was called doubtful to play by Charron on Thursday. But Tverdovsky extended his streak of consecutive games to 284, logging a game-high 26 minutes 40 seconds of ice time. The goal was his 13th, two shy of his career best set last season.

In overtime, Duck goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere stopped winger Adam Deadmarsh’s shot from the right wing off a cross-ice pass from center Bryan Smolinski. Potvin stacked his pads moments later to deny Duck winger Paul Kariya on a point-blank shot.

The Kings outshot the Ducks, 39-23, giving up only a handful of quality scoring chances. The Kings also muzzled the Ducks’ top line of Kariya, Tony Hrkac and Jeff Friesen, but failed to clear Tverdovsky from the front of their net on the game’s pivotal play.

“[The Ducks] got a couple of shots from the point with good screens in front and they found their way into the net,” Deadmarsh said. “Tonight was a tough night for us for scoring goals. We ended up scoring three, but we had a lot of chances to score more.

“It was a tough point we gave away tonight. We came back to the tie the game, but couldn’t keep the lead, obviously. Every point is critical right now, but we ended up getting one, so we’ll take it from there.”

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WEST RACE

If the NHL playoffs began today, the Kings (80 points) would be out of the Western Conference race in ninth:

1. Colorado

111

2. Detroit

103

3. Dallas

94

4. St. Louis

97

5. Vancouver

86

6. Edmonton

85

7. San Jose

83

8. Phoenix

81

Note: The top three are division leaders.

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