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Doan, Coyotes edge Kings

Dec 27, 2008 - 7:08 AM By John Reger PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

LOS ANGELES (Ticker) -- Shane Doan probably wished he could play against the Los Angeles Kings every night.

The captain scored a goal and set up another to lead the Phoenix Coyotes to a 2-1 victory over the Kings on Friday.

Doan has more career points against the Kings than any other team, notching 22 goals and 35 assists against Los Angeles during his 13 NHL seasons - all spent with the Coyotes franchise.

"We play them a lot," Doan said. "That's something, a team you play a lot you want to compete against them. It's a tough building for me to play in it seems, but somehow I've found points."

Phoenix opened the scoring midway through the first period after catching the Kings flatfooted. Doan led a 2-on-1 rush and flicked a pass to Mueller, who slid a shot under Los Angeles netminder Jonathan Quick's left skate.

"He's skating much better than he was earlier," Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky said of Mueller. "He's playing pretty well, the fact he hasn't scored in a while is part of the equation. He's getting a lot of chances and the fact that he finally got a goal, maybe took the pressure off."

The Kings nearly had the equalizer in the second period on the power play, but rookie defenseman Drew Doughty's slap shot from the right point hit the goalpost.

Doan gave the Coyotes a 2-0 edge with 2:17 left in the middle session with a power-play goal. He scored five seconds after Kyle Quincey was called for roughing by redirecting Olli Jokinen's slap shot.

Ilya Bryzgalov nearly recorded his second shutout in three games, but the Kings ended his bid at 8:49 of the third period. Defenseman Peter Harrold fired a slap shot from the right point past Bryzgalov, who was screened by captain Dustin Brown.

"I didn't see it," Bryzgalov said. "I tried to find it, but I only saw it when the puck was close to me. I tried to reach the puck but it was too late."

Harrold almost tied the score breaking in on Bryzgalov with 3:25 remaining, but was turned away by the goalie. Bryzgalov made 24 saves.

"The team battled, we just came up a little short," Quick said. "These are games that we need to win. Being division games, it's a four-point game. We've got to refocus and go back into Phoenix tomorrow and try to come out with a different outcome."

The Kings pulled Quick, who also finished with 24 stops, with 97 seconds remaining but could not get the tying goal.

"Well you can't play a game in the NHL and play only 20 minutes and expect to win, those days are done," Kings coach Terry Murray said. "You have to come and play right from the beginning, you have to play 60 minutes hard, intense and very heavy hockey.

"In the first two periods, we were not going, we didn't have it. The third period was what we needed for the 60 minutes."