Vancouver’s Sedin twins are key to win over Kings

The season was slipping away in the din of Staples Center, and the Sedin twins recognized the slippery slope.

How could they not?

But they are both alert and intelligent enough to recognize that things, indeed, may be different for the Canucks. Forty minutes of adversity didn’t mean that it was destined to end in tears.

“I said it from Day One, it’s a different team,” Henrik Sedin said. “And we stuck with it. That’s the biggest thing. Personally, our line, if this would have been a couple of years ago we would have started cheating.

“Would have made plays we shouldn’t have made and the game would have been out of hand after 40 minutes. You have to stick with it.”

That they did.

The Sedins showed up in a big way. Henrik Sedin scored the game-winning goal late in the third period, set up, of course, by his identical twin, Daniel. And the Sedins combined for five points in the Canucks’ 6-4 win against the Kings in Game 4 at Staples Center.

And if that wasn’t enough … they helped kill penalties.

The woeful Canucks penalty kill got a little better with some help from their friends, the Sedins. Then again, it couldn’t get much worse.

The Kings scored on their first two power-play opportunities. Then Vancouver stopped its free fall and killed the final two chances.

Henrik even cracked a joke about the difficulties.

“Like I said, our PK killed us last game,” he said. “And tonight, we may have killed one off.”

Scoring game winners, killing penalties and delivering a dry line. Yes, Henrik really did do it all on Wednesday.

They wanted to help kill penalties.

“We talked about it. We wanted to do it,” Henrik said. “It’s tough to see a lot of pucks go in. We both played PK before and we wanted to do something. He gave us a chance and hopefully we can stay there.”

Said Daniel Sedin: “I think we showed a lot of character. We know our PK is good.”

Henrik scored on an outnumbered attack, a four-on-two rush, saying: “I was going to pass first, but I was pretty open so I made the shot and it was nice to see it go in.”

Said the Kings’ Dustin Brown: “You can’t give good players great opportunities. They’re great players and you give them an opportunity with the puck on their stick late in the game and they’ll make something happen.”

The twins were boosted by a different look on their line, as right wing Mikael Samuelsson joined them, adding some speed.

But Daniel thought the game turned when goalie Roberto Luongo stopped the Kings’ Alexander Frolov on a breakaway early in the third period.

“Those are the saves we need to get because they’re going to get scoring chances. He was great tonight and hopefully he’ll keep going,” Daniel said.

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

Twitter.com/reallisa