• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers

Bieksa's late goal lifts Canucks over Kings

Feb 25, 2007 - 7:42 AM LOS ANGELES (Ticker) -- After being absent from the goal column for nearly two months, defenseman Kevin Bieksa is beginning to find the net again.

Bieksa scored his second goal in as many games late in the third period to snap a tie and give the Vancouver Canucks their sixth straight win, a 3-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings.

After tallying nine times in his first 36 games of the season, Bieksa went 23 contests without a goal before scoring in Vancouver's 3-2 overtime win over Anaheim on Tuesday.

The 25-year-old blue-liner cashed in again in this one, taking a feed from captain Markus Naslund in the slot and snapping the puck over goaltender Mathieu Garon's glove with 3:56 to go in the third for a 3-2 lead.

"It was just a great pass by Naslund," Bieksa said. "He saw me cutting through and the scouting report was to go high glove side on (Garon). I just put my head down and was lucky it went there."

It was one of just a handful of shots in the period by the Canucks, who were outshot in the final 20 minutes, 14-4. But netminder Roberto Luongo was infallible in the session and yielded just two goals on 33 shots overall.

Brendan Morrison and Trevor Linden also scored and Bieksa added an assist for Vancouver, which maintained its three-point lead over second-place Minnesota in the Northwest Division.

"It wasn't our best game, but we'll take it," Bieksa said.

Morrison tied the game at 1-1 with 3:48 to go in the first period on a power play. He gathered the puck after defenseman Sami Salo's shot caromed off the end boards and snapped it past Garon.

Linden halted an 11-game goalless drought just 94 seconds into the middle session, firing a shot from the left faceoff dot over Garon's glove for a 2-1 advantage. Rookie John Zeiler and defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky tallied for the Kings, who suffered just their second regulation loss in eight games (3-2-3).

Zeiler, who was signed by Los Angeles on Saturday, netted his first career goal midway through the opening period by blasting a shot from the right circle between Luongo's pads for a 1-0 lead. Visnovsky erased a 2-1 deficit with five minutes left in the third period, when he flipped a rebound over the Canucks' All-Star netminder.

Luongo improved to 6-0-0 with 11 goals allowed in his last six starts.