The Los Angeles Kings reasserted their dominance over the Anaheim Ducks with a tense, 2-1, win Thursday night.
Jonathan Quick picked up 40th win of the year – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
Milan Lucic and Kris Versteeg both scored in the first two minutes of the second period to give the Kings all the offense they needed.
“That’s what you want,” Kings defenseman Drew Doughty said. “You don’t want to be relying on other teams to beat other teams. We’ve relied on other teams before, and it didn’t go so well for us. This year, we were really focused on determining our own destiny by having the chance to win again to get in and get first in our division, and we have the opportunity now.”
Jonathan Quick made 19 saves for his 40th win of the season, a single season record for the Kings.
“It was a big game for both teams, and everyone understands the situation for this game, and it is probably as close as you will get to a playoff game in the regular season, so it was good that we played our game,” Kings captain Dustin Brown said.
Ryan Kesler was the lone Ducks scorer.
“It wasn’t as clean as we would have like it to be,” Ducks defenseman Cam Fowler said. “Against a team like that, that’s extremely physical and creates offense from their forecheck, you have to manage the puck or you’re going to be scrambling all night, and that was kind of the theme tonight.”
The Ducks have two games left on their schedule, all this weekend.
“They outworked us for two periods,” Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau said. “You get 10 shots on goal, you’re not going to have success. It wasn’t the recipe that we’ve had when we’ve been in this building before.”
John Gibson made 27 saves and played the entire game except for 1:11 when he left the ice for equipment problems.
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