LOS ANGELES (AP) A strong power play and penalty kill can carry a team deep into the Stanley Cup playoffs. Right now Womens Travis Hamonic Jersey , the Los Angeles Kings hope their special teams can do what it takes just to reach the postseason.Anze Kopitar scored one of his team’s three power-play goals, Jonathan Quick made 23 saves and the Kings moved back into playoff position with a 3-0 win over the Calgary Flames on Monday night.”Obviously, scoring three power-play goals goes a long way,” Kopitar said. ”I guess this time of year it doesn’t really matter how you do it but you’ve got to figure out ways to win, and we did that tonight.”Jeff Carter also scored and Dion Phaneuf had a goal and an assist for the Kings, who tied Anaheim for third place in the Pacific Division at 91 points. They also passed Colorado (90 points) and St. Louis (89) in the Western Conference wild-card race.Phaneuf gave the Kings a 1-0 lead 4:04 into the second period, scoring on a long shot from the blue line five seconds into a power play. All four of Phaneuf’s goals since being acquired from Ottawa in a Feb. 13 trade have come on the man advantage.Adrian Kempe got the lone assist for winning the faceoff against Troy Brouwer, and Tyler Toffoli set a screen that kept goalie Mike Smith from seeing Phaneuf’s shot.”The key on power play, if you get people to the net and you get opportunities for lanes to the net and you shoot the puck early, it really forces the penalty killers to turn and face their net,” Kings coach John Stevens said. ”Once Dion shot the first one there, it really had a ripple effect where guys were looking to move the puck quick and get it to the net.”Kopitar made it 2-0 at 11:55 with his seventh power-play goal of the season. Scoring on a wrist shot from the left circle, Kopitar matched his career high of 34 goals during the 2009-10 season. The Kings captain has five goals in his last three games.Flames forward Sam Bennett committed three penalties in the opening 30:21, with his infractions for high-sticking and tripping leading to the Kings’ first two power-play goals.Carter put Los Angeles in front 3-0 by following up his own rebound from close range at 8:24 of the third. He has 10 goals in 16 games since returning from surgery to repair a cut tendon in his ankle.Los Angeles scored three power-play goals in a game for the third time.Smith stopped 26 shots for the Flames, who were eliminated from playoff contention. Calgary has been outscored 28-7 during a six-game losing streak.”It’s tough to create against LA at the best of times, but I thought we limited them. Again, 5-on-5, there weren’t many chances out there. Just the specialty teams came into play,” Flames coach Glen Gulutzan said.Already without forwards Sean Monahan and Matthew Tkachuk because of injury, the depleted Flames had to play without top scorer Johnny Gaudreau, who was not with the team after his father had a cardiac event on Monday.The lack of scoring punch beyond those three, who have combined to score 78 of Calgary’s 203 goals, is something the Flames will have to address to get back into the playoff chase next season Troy Brouwer Jersey , Gulutzan said.”You can see that we’re a little bit dependent on some of our top guys to create most of our offense, and that’s an issue that is coming to light a little bit,” Gulutzan said.NOTES: Kings D Jake Muzzin did not return after sustaining an upper-body injury in the second period. Muzzin fell awkwardly into the boards following a hit by Micheal Ferland. … Dustin Brown had two assists.UP NEXTFlames: Host the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday night.Kings: Host the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday night.— ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) No team in the ultra-competitive Western Conference has made the playoffs more times in a row than the Minnesota Wild, with six straight appearances to share the current streak lead with the Anaheim Ducks.That regular season consistency has only led, however, to April dissatisfaction. Ousted in five games by Winnipeg in their first-round series, the Wild were sent again to an early exit from the Stanley Cup tournament. They were shut out by the Jets in the last two contests and finished with a scoreless streak of 141:47.”It’s really disappointing. I don’t think that’s indicative of the kind of team that we have. It was just a really tough night,” center Matt Cullen said after the 5-0 loss in Winnipeg on Friday. ”Obviously with our backs against the wall, I think we all expected more and hoped for more, and I think if we could do it all over again every guy would like to give more.”There was no shame in being beaten by the Jets, a deeper, faster team with an exceptional goalie in Connor Hellebuyck that finished with the second-best record in the NHL in 2017-18. For the Wild, though, there’s an overarching theme of staying stuck at a good-but-not-great level since the franchise-altering signings of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter helped start this remarkable-but-unfulfilling run of making the playoffs every year with the two stars on the roster.”We want more. We expect more from ourselves. We let another one slip away,” right wing Charlie Coyle said.Here are some key angles to the end of the Wild’s season:LOOKING BACKThe Wild are 2-6 in series and 15-29 in games in the postseason during the Parise-Suter era that began on July 4, 2012. The 17-year-old franchise’s only advancement past the second round remains the 2003 surge to the Western Conference finals, where the Wild were swept by the Ducks.The postseason trouble encountered by the Wild used to be in the form of the Chicago Blackhawks, who eliminated them in 2013, 2014 and 2015. The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in the first and third of those years. They lost in the first round in 2016 and 2017, though, and failed to make the playoffs this spring for the first time in 10 years. So Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews are no longer the problem.Now Nashville and Winnipeg have taken the lead in the daunting Central Division, with the Predators taking the Presidents’ Trophy with the league’s best record one season after reaching the Stanley Cup finals. Six of the seven teams made the playoffs either last year or this year.”We certainly believed that we could give these guys a real run for it even though nobody seemed to be giving us a chance http://www.hurricanesshoponline.com/authentic-andrei-svechnikov-jersey ,” goalie Devan Dubnyk said. ”We’re one play away each game. I know that’s easy to say, but it’s really how close it was besides tonight.”BANGED UPThis year, in fairness, one of the hurdles to postseason success became the rare absence of Suter, who has long been one of the NHL’s most durable players as a puck-moving, tough-minded defenseman. His broken ankle diluted the blue line in the final week of the regular season.Then Parise, whose late-season surge signaled he was all the way back from the back injury and surgery that kept him out for the first 39 games, was knocked out of action with a broken sternum suffered in Game 3 against the Jets.”Every team has injuries, right?” captain Mikko Koivu said, adding: ”For sure that hurts, there’s no question about that. But we can’t go behind that.”CULLEN MULLINGMatt Cullen, after winning the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017, put off retirement for another year and returned to his home-state team with 11 goals, 11 assists and valuable leadership at age 41. He wasn’t ready to address his future after Game 5.”My only thought here the last while was getting it back home for Game 6,” Cullen said. ”So to be honest I don’t have an answer right now.”QUIET COYLENot every forward will be productive in a playoff series, of course, but the Wild were hurting without any goals or assists by three of their top-nine forwards: Coyle, Nino Niederreiter and Jason Zucker. Coyle, who had only 11 goals during the regular season, was especially ineffective against the Jets.”Had plenty of chances to finish. I didn’t finish. Or the goalie came up big,” Coyle said. ”Whatever it is I didn’t get the job done. That hurts.”—