Kings Draw More Blanks

King Coach Andy Murray insisted that Tuesday night’s game was equally important to the Kings as it was to the Vancouver Canucks.

His players, however, apparently didn’t get the message.

The determined Canucks, on the verge of elimination from the playoff race, kept their hopes alive, burying the Kings with three second-period goals en route to a 4-0 victory in front of a sellout crowd of 18,422 at General Motors Place.

The Kings, 4-0 losers Sunday at Phoenix, have lost consecutive games for the first time since mid-November and were shut out in consecutive games for the first time since February 2000, when they were blanked at Chicago and Edmonton.

“This is the wrong time of the year [for this],” King captain Mattias Norstrom said. “We need that little hunger back that they had tonight. I think that was the only difference. They were a step ahead of us, had more jump in their legs.”

While the Kings’ league-leading penalty-killing unit gave up three goals for only the second time in 73 games, their league-leading power play failed to convert in six opportunities.

“Special teams is something that has carried us all year,” King defenseman Aaron Miller said, “but they failed us tonight.”

Dan Cloutier stopped 18 shots in recording his seventh shutout.

For the Canucks, 10th in the Western Conference and losers of two consecutive games after winning five in a row on the road to pump new life into their flickering playoff chances, this was almost a make-or-break game.

Or at least it was being treated that way in British Columbia.

Murray, however, was loathe to admit the game was any less crucial to the Kings, even though their five-point lead over the Dallas Stars in the race for the final playoff slot in the West remained intact despite the loss.

“We never take things for granted,” he said before the game. “I think my job’s on the line every time we take the ice, and I want our players to feel the same way. We want them recognizing that right now we’ve got to play hard every night because somebody’s chasing us from behind.

“Everybody says, ‘You should be looking at the teams in front of you.’ Well, once we get to a secure position and get 93 points, then we’ll take a look at the teams in front of us. Right now, I’m looking in the rear-view mirror.

“I think we’re driven by a fear of failure.”

His counterpart, meanwhile, said his team was driven by a fear of the Kings, who have posted the best record in the league over the last 31/2 months and had not lost in regulation to the Canucks in nine games under Murray.

“Yes, it is a very stiff challenge,” Canuck Coach Marc Crawford told Vancouver reporters before the game. “They are, if not the best team in the league right now, certainly in the top three or four. They’re a great team.”

Canuck veteran Trevor Linden, playing in his 1,000th game, asked that a pregame ceremony marking the occasion be scrapped, lest it become a distraction. Instead, he was given a video tribute on the scoreboard about seven minutes into the game, the crowd rising to its feet to give him a standing ovation.

The fans weren’t nearly as thrilled when Linden drew a double minor for high-sticking Bryan Smolinski at 18:11 of the first period. Smolinski needed two stitches to close a cut above his right eye but returned to the game.

In 3 minutes 33 seconds with the man advantage, however, the Kings were unable to break a scoreless tie. Their power play ended at 1:44 of the second period when Cliff Ronning was sent to the penalty box for hooking Brendan Morrison.

Morrison scored a power-play goal 76 seconds later, his 20th goal of the season, taking a pass from Canuck scoring leader Todd Bertuzzi and flipping a backhanded shot past King goaltender Felix Potvin with 17 minutes to play in the period.

Only 3:09 later, Henrik Sedin gave the Canucks a 2-0 lead, redirecting a shot from the right faceoff circle by Scott Lachance.

Then, with King rookie Jaroslav Bednar in the penalty box for hooking Lachance, Bertuzzi scored his 30th goal, taking a pass from Andrew Cassels and wristing a shot into the net from the bottom of the right circle with 4:50 to play in the period.