Kings Enjoy Upbeat Ending

In a highly improbable development, the injury-depleted Kings played a meaningful game in April.

Long out of the playoff chase, they took the Northwest Division race into the season’s final frantic minutes Sunday, surprising the Vancouver Canucks, 2-0, at GM Place to deny the Canucks their first division title in 10 years and deliver to the Colorado Avalanche its NHL-record ninth in a row.

And in holding Markus Naslund scoreless, they denied the Canuck captain the league scoring title, which went to Peter Forsberg of the Avalanche.

The Canucks, who had led the race since Nov. 27, needed one point Sunday to wrap up the division championship. But they fell into second place during the second intermission, when the Avalanche completed a 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues at Denver to leapfrog over the Canucks in the standings. They stayed there as the Kings, who had a team-record 13 players unavailable because of injuries and suited up only 17 skaters, scored two goals in the last six minutes to end a six-game winless streak against the Canucks.

Mikko Eloranta scored on a rebound with 5:55 to play, Eric Belanger added an empty-net goal with 43 seconds left and Jamie Storr turned aside 27 shots for his third shutout of the season and 16th of his career.

Naslund -- whose 104 points left him two behind Forsberg, who had a goal and two assists Sunday -- suggested afterward that the Canucks had choked.

“This was our last game this [season], the last time for us to make an impression as a team,” Coach Andy Murray said of the Kings, who lost a club-record 531 man games to injury this season.

“I’m glad we’re going away feeling good about ourselves.”

On the other hand, the Canucks are going to the playoffs.

“It’s frustrating because my season is over,” Storr said. “They get a chance to go on to try to win something [the Stanley Cup] that everybody wants to win. I’d rather they were the spoilers and we were going to the playoffs.”