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Smith, Stars blank Kings

Nov 20, 2007 - 5:31 AM By John Tranchina PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

DALLAS (Ticker) -- Mike Smith had a while to sit and watch, but now that he's gotten another opportunity, he's made the most of it.

Making his second consecutive start, the backup goaltender stopped all 22 shots he faced to lead the Dallas Stars to a 3-0 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Monday.

Smith recorded his first shutout of the season and fourth of his career by stopping nine shots in the first, seven in the second and six in the third period.

"When you're not playing, you tend to lean on stuff that got you where you are - and when I did get a chance to get in, I felt pretty good," said Smith, making just his sixth start of the season. "The team's playing better and we're finding ways to win games and that's the most important thing right now.

"I'm going to enjoy this while I have it here now, and hopefully, we can keep this winning thing going."

Steve Ott, Niklas Hagman and Jere Lehtinen scored for Dallas, which won its second straight.

It was the first meeting between the teams since the Kings' amazing four-goal third-period comeback on November 10 that led to Stars general manager Doug Armstrong's firing.

"The best part of that game was I thought we got better as it went along," Stars coach Dave Tippett said. "The third period was our best, we needed that to win the game. That's the bottom line. I think it's a motivator to make sure it doesn't happen again. When a team's pushing to come from behind, you're able to find seams and we were able to do that tonight."

Smith, who was pulled after allowing two goals on nine shots in just 14 minutes of a 5-0 loss to Phoenix on November 2, made key saves on Michael Cammalleri and Ladislav Nagy during a power play midway through the third period.

"I thought that our power play was pretty good," said Los Angeles' Anze Kopitar, who scored the game-winner in overtime in Los Angeles on November 10. "We got in the zone good, we were moving the puck well, we were shooting pucks, but we just couldn't get that lucky bounce to put it behind Smith there. He certainly played good tonight."

"I haven't played that much in the last few weeks or month and the team went through some changes there," Smith said. "Hopefully I can get in some more games here and we can get both (starter Marty Turco) and me playing really well."

With Los Angeles controlling the play midway through the game, Dallas outshot the Kings, 8-0, over the last six-plus minutes of the second period.

Ott scored his second goal of the season with just 1:23 remaining in the session.

After Ott won a battle along the boards, the puck went to Loui Eriksson at the top of the circles. Eriksson spun and fired toward the goal, but Ott cut to the net and lunged to deflect the puck past goaltender Jason LaBarbera.

"He's played well lately, he's really found a little niche," Tippett said of Ott. "Otter's brought some good energy, little things in his game.

"When you get a goal, people notice him. He's physical, he's been doing a good job on the penalty killing for us."

It was Eriksson's first point in two games since being recalled the Stars' American Hockey League affiliate in Iowa, and his second point in eight games overall this season.

Dallas made sure there would be no big comeback this night with two goals in the final seven minutes. Hagman scored on a breakaway with 6:50 remaining, ripping a wrist shot over LaBarbera's glove to give them some breathing room.

"This time I figured I'm going to shoot it and I just managed to put it in," Hagman said of his team-leading ninth goal of the season. "I just had a good feeling when I managed to look up and see where the goalie's standing. I think I saw some space over there."

"I guess they scored on their chances and we didn't," said LaBarbera, who finished with 23 saves. "The breakaway happened so fast, he just popped in on me like that. I didn't even feel like I had time to get set, but he made a good play."

Then with 4:36 to go, Mike Ribeiro set up behind the Los Angeles net and fed a slick pass into the slot to Lehtinen, who slammed home a one-timer on a power play for his sixth goal. The tally also extended his career-high point streak to seven games.

"Those are tough plays, especially when you got a guy like Ribeiro back there," LaBarbera said. "He did a good job of moving from side to side and making a quick play and Lehtinen shot it right away."

"They got the goal at the end of the second period and then I thought we did everything we wanted to do," Kings coach Marc Crawford said. "We got lots of chances, their goalie was pretty good, and then we make a mistake, we give up a breakaway. They were definitely not going to allow us to come back like we did the last time we played them."