Kings' King princely

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Mark J. Terrill / The Associated Press Coyotes� Lauri Korpikoski catches Kings� Dustin Brown off guard. (CP)

LOS ANGELES -- The Phoenix Coyotes get big marks for resilience, effort, never-say-die and all sorts of intangibles.

The tangibles, however, keep going the way of the Los Angeles Kings, who are now 11-1 and one victory away from a trip to the Stanley Cup final after outlasting Phoenix 2-1 Thursday night in just the sort of tight road game the Coyotes had to play.

If only they had got the result.

Down 3-0 now in the Western Conference final against what's looking more and more like an L.A. juggernaut, the Coyotes need some sort of act of the hockey gods to keep them alive, and failing that, the end could come as soon as Sunday afternoon.

Dwight King, the big rookie third-liner from Meadow Lake, Sask., wheeled out of the corner and beat Mike Smith high to the glove side early in the third period to give the Kings their first lead of the night, and they nursed it home from there to take a stranglehold on the series.

It was the fourth goal of the series for King, including a Game 1 empty-netter, playing on a line with Jarret Stoll and Trevor Lewis that ran the Coyotes ragged all night.

"We wanted to have our own push in front of our owns fans, show our push," said Stoll, whose hustle set up King's goal. "It took us a while to get our own game (going), but we did, especially in the third period."

Phoenix coach Dave Tippett scrambled his lines and added rabble-rousing forward Paul Bissonnette, hoping to get a blast of emotion from his troops with centre Martin Hanzal lost to a one-game suspension for his Game 2 hit on Dustin Brown.

It seemed to be working out when the Coyotes had all the jump and most of the play in the first 10 minutes -- and outshot the Kings in a period for the first time, 11-8. But they didn't generate much offence and the Kings gradually started to take back the ice.

They'd have had the lead, too, if not for nifty saves by Smith on Slava Voynov, Anze Kopitar and Mike Richards.

Any fears for Brown's health, meanwhile, were allayed on his first shift when the L.A. captain picked out the biggest Coyote on the ice, Taylor Pyatt, and stapled him in the neutral zone.

Phoenix scored first, though, 63 ticks into the second period, when a simple pass up the middle by Keith Yandle to Daymond Langkow somehow caught both Voynov and centre Richards out of position, and Langkow burst in alone to beat Jonathan Quick through the five-hole.

But the first Phoenix lead of the series lasted just a hair over two minutes before Brown sent Kopitar away on a clean breakaway and he had Smith on his belly doing the breaststroke by the time he slid a backhand deke past him to tie it 1-1.

The Kings frequently turned up their level of play and Phoenix simply couldn't stay with them, having to weather a swarm of L.A. chances, and Smith was sensational in goal, but the offensively challenged Coyotes just didn't have anything with which to answer the Kings' skating and puck skill.

The ice surface at a sold-out Staples Center seemed passable, but with five more games scheduled in the next three days -- four basketball and one hockey, including doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday -- it could be iffy for Game 4 Sunday, when an overtime game lasting more than one extra period could cause the NBA Clippers' playoff game to be delayed.

-- Postmedia News, with files from The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 18, 2012 C3