Kings don't let Ducks up for air in London

By Chuck Culpepper

Sept. 30, 2007 12 AM PT

Special to The Times

LONDON -- A fragmented sports crowd dressed in every jersey from Kings to Ducks to Hurricanes to Red Wings to Rangers to Devils to Flames to Maple Leafs to Belfast Giants to Sheffield Steelers to Boehringer Mannheim to something having to do with Slovakia, finally settled on a theme Saturday night.

“Let’s go, Ducks!” they began chanting five minutes to closing.

In their wish for a photo finish, they tried to help a reigning Stanley Cup champion against a minnow, and they showed how inverted things got in the O2 Arena in Europe’s first NHL regular-season game.

The mighty Ducks got snuffed, the puppy Kings got going with a 4-1 win, and the elder 25-year-old Michael Cammalleri got downright amorous.

“I love London,” he said flatly after two power-play goals -- his singing one-timer in the first period that zinged past Ilya Bryzgalov’s right shoulder, and his nudging tip-in in the third that floated over Bryzgalov’s left.

For one game out of 82 and one of two in the O2, the Kings fancied London even when it malfunctioned. Shortly after the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Save The Queen,” in that oddly inverse order, came an announcement: “Our sincere apologies, there has been a failure of the lighting system that will take five minutes to repair.”

It took 16, and the teams retreated to the lockers, and the crowd listened to that dual-citizen Madonna, but Kings Coach Marc Crawford said, “I think maybe the delay, in some ways, may have helped us.”

Every team with a 19-year-old goaltender needs a little distracting lunacy now and then, even when playing a team that lacked possible retirees Teemu Selanne and Scott Niedermayer, plus primo goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere as he recovers from hernia surgery.

But when the puck dropped on the NHL’s eight-month, two-continent slog, the same Jonathan Bernier with the resume reading only “Lewiston” up and thrived. Grizzled teammates such as Anze Kopitar, a geezer of 20, would skate by him, tap his pads and offer encouragement such as, Kopitar said, “Keep kicking.”

They also offered him a power-play defense that, according to the Ducks’ Chris Pronger, “did a very good job of keeping everything to the outside.” He had to be good, but they ensured he did not have to be great.

That certainly mattered in this one game, for Europe got a primer on power plays when not lining up at the fish-and-chips stands. The Kings and Ducks battled penalty for penalty until each wound up with nine. They scored all the pertinent goals on power plays (discounting an empty-net, last-minute add-on).

They demonstrated how the Kings could ward off an early five-on-three disadvantage, inspired “maybe because the young guy was in net,” Crawford said, and in a manner that “comes back to haunt you later in the hockey game,” Ducks Coach Randy Carlyle said. Then they revealed how the Ducks couldn’t do likewise when Shane Hnidy took the early NHL lead in penalties (three) and captain Pronger picked up one 18 seconds into the third period.

During that penalty, Cammalleri’s second goal made it 3-0 and made sure Ducks defenseman Sean O’Donnell would say, “I think special teams was the difference. I think five-on-five, we limited their chances pretty well.”

Five on four, Cammalleri scored from Lubomir Visnovsky’s assist for 1-0. Five on four, Kopitar sent a second-period shot that Bryzgalov stopped, only for the puck to park itself just behind his folded right leg, hanging out until Rob Blake stuffed it in.

Those goals wrung lukewarm cheers from the sellout if not completely full crowd of 17,500, which saved its most sustained dins for the lukewarm fights -- one in the second period, two more near the end of the third -- until it finally saw the champions score.

Bobby Ryan put in a rebound at 13:09 of the third, and the crowd began pulling for the Ducks to catch all the way up.

When they couldn’t, the first mob hug of the season wore purple and surrounded a teenager.

“Looked like a real solid, solid goaltender,” Crawford said.

“I don’t think it could have gone any better for him, his first game,” the opponent O’Donnell said.

“He’s very calm,” Kopitar said.