Kings Able to Enforce Their Will

The Kings’ long climb from oblivion in the Western Conference moved to within steps of the Pacific Division summit Monday night.

Getting two unexpected goals from tough-guy left wing Ken Belanger and the third-period winner from Adam Deadmarsh, the Kings held off San Jose, 3-2, in front of a sellout crowd of 17,496 at the Compaq Center to pull to within two points of the first-place Sharks.

In pursuit of their first division championship since 1991 and only the second in franchise history, the Kings are 3-0 against the Sharks. The teams will play two more games in the season’s final three weeks, on Saturday at Staples Center and the finale back at the Compaq Center on April 13.

“Somehow, we’ve got their number right now,” said King center Bryan Smolinski, who survived a nasty second-period collision that sent Shark winger Stephane Matteau to the hospital. “But all that could change.”

The victory, their fourth in a row overall and fifth in six games, improved the Kings’ road record to 18-10-4-3, 16-5-4-2 since the end of October. They’ve earned points in all but one of their last 11 road games.

Belanger, who makes his living as an enforcer and hadn’t scored in more than 16 months, also figured indirectly in the winning goal. With Owen Nolan in the penalty box for high-sticking Belanger, who was left with a cut over his left eye that required stitches, Deadmarsh scored his 26th goal on a shot from the right faceoff circle with 5:44 to play.

“I just had a couple of shots on net and they went in,” said Belanger, whose multi-point game was the first of his career. “It was a big win for us. Every game now is big like that, so everyone’s got to step up.”

The Sharks have led the division race most of the season, but the Kings have made steady progress in catching up, trimming what had been a 14-point deficit on Dec. 9 by going 26-8-5-2 while the Sharks have gone 22-15-3.

Not that the Kings’ surge had caught the Sharks by surprise.

“They’re a very good team,” Shark Coach Darryl Sutter said before the game. “They were a better team than we were last year [in the playoffs], so to think they’re not going to be with us, somebody’s smoking the bad stuff....

“Two things with L.A. that don’t get talked about enough: They play a really physical, hard game; it gets overlooked, I think. And No. 2, how good they are defensively. They don’t give up many scoring chances.”

One area of concern for the Kings has been scoring, but they moved to address that need Saturday, acquiring left wing Cliff Ronning in a trade with the Nashville Predators. A 15-year NHL veteran, the 5-foot-8, 165-pound Ronning had been the Predators’ leading scorer in each of their four seasons.

In his first game as a King, Ronning started on the second line with Ziggy Palffy and Smolinski, with Jason Allison, Craig Johnson and Deadmarsh making up the top line and rookie Jaroslav Bednar sliding down to the fourth with Adam Mair and Belanger.

Ronning, who had one shot on goal in 151/2 minutes, also saw time on the top line after Johnson suffered a cut above his left eye and left the game in the first period, complaining of blurred vision.

But it wasn’t Ronning or Allison or any of the other top scorers who gave the Kings a 1-0 lead 3:37 into the game. It was the 6-foot-4, 231-pound Belanger, whose shot from the right circle gave him his first goal in 33 games with the Kings; his first since Nov. 11, 2000, with the Boston Bruins, ending a 56-game drought; and only his 10th in 229 NHL games.

The score was still 1-0 less than 31/2 minutes into the second period when Smolinski was sandwiched between Matteau and Shark defenseman Bryan Marchment in a neutral-ice collision.

“I just got my bell rung,” Smolinski said.

Matteau, however, got the worst of it. While the game was delayed for about 10 minutes, he was lifted onto a stretcher and carried off the ice. Though he was moving on his own and did not appear to be seriously injured, Matteau was taken as a precaution to a local hospital, where he was expected to be kept overnight.

Meanwhile, the teams battled on, Belanger giving the Kings a 2-0 lead at 3:23 of the third period on a shot from the left point.

The Sharks, limited to nine shots on goal in the first two periods, came alive in the third and pulled even on goals by Scott Thornton and Marco Sturm.

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Race in the West

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