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Quincey leads Kings past Wild

Mar 8, 2009 - 1:58 AM LOS ANGELES (Ticker) -- Defenseman Kyle Quincey scored a goal and set up another as the Los Angeles Kings edged the Minnesota Wild, 4-3, on Saturday.

Kyle Calder, Anze Kopitar and Teddy Purcell also tallied and rookie Jonathan Quick made 21 saves for the Kings, who snapped a four-game losing streak with a 5-4 overtime victory over the Dallas Stars on Thursday.

"We've got to come every night, we can't take any nights off, we can't give teams easy wins and we have to almost play perfect hockey from here on out," Quincey said. "We've shown that we can go on rolls. It's do-or-die for us, you either show up or you don't."

Owen Nolan, Stephane Veilleux and Eric Belanger netted goals and captain Andrew Brunette notched two assists for Minnesota, which had dropped five of its previous six.

"We tried to come back," Wild coach Jacques Lemaire said. "It's hard because we don't score a lot of goals and when you get easy goals against you, then you're in trouble."

Quincey opened the scoring at 2:26 of the first period, firing a wrist shot from the right faceoff circle that sailed by All-Star Niklas Backstrom.

"I think we played very well defensively," Quincey said. "I think we played well enough to win."

Nolan forged a tie at 9:22, but Calder restored Los Angeles' lead 29 seconds later with his eighth goal of the season. Veilleux leveled the contest once again with 5:03 remaining in the session.

At 8:45 of the second, Kopitar gave the Kings a 3-2 lead by unleashing a slap shot for his 23rd tally of the campaign.

Backstrom, who was playing his third game since signing a 4-year, $24 million contract extension, was promptly relieved by backup Josh Harding after facing just 13 shots.

"It was not a good day for the goalie," Lemaire said. "There were some stoppable shots, but I thought we battled hard."

Purcell registered a power-play goal with 4:49 left in the session and Belanger halved the deficit just under five minutes into the third, but Quick was impenetrable the rest of the way.

"Our power play has been real good at critical times," Los Angeles coach Terry Murray said. "The secret is that we're shooting the puck. We're taking it, attacking the seams, attacking the net, we have great traffic in front of the net right now and we're keeping it pretty simple."