Ducks’ situation gets tougher with Game 2 loss to Kings

Corey Perry, opportunistic and crafty, saw the opening, took advantage and pulled off the trick against the Kings.

Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with scoring.

The Kings, by virtue of their 3-1 win against the Ducks on Monday night in Game 2 in Anaheim, now lead their Western Conference semifinal series, two games to none.

Perry has been held in check — pointless in two games — against the Kings and the gifted forward with a vaunted goal scorer’s touch has not scored since Game 6 of the first round against the Dallas Stars.

He had 43 goals in the regular season, and is a former league most valuable player.

This hasn’t become the Drought of Detroit, in which Perry did not score against the Red Wings in last season’s playoffs. But it is just as dire because the Ducks essentially lost serve by dropping the first game in overtime at home and a tough situation turned grim after Monday’s defeat.

“It’s the playoffs,” Perry said of the tighter circumstances. “You’ve got to battle through that. If you’re going to accept that, you’re not going to have many chances to score. Yeah, we had a lot of shots. The quality of second opportunities we didn’t have.

“Those are the frustrating parts because we talked about that before the game…. All they did was shoot it out, flip it out or whatever. It’s second opportunities where you’ve got to score on [Kings goalie Jonathan] Quick.”

The Ducks were in a bad place right from the start when Kings forward Marian Gaborik scored just 34 seconds into the game.

“That’s not the start that I expect of our group, especially us up front,” said Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf. “That’s on us. We tried to work and get back at it after that. You can’t sulk on those things.

“We’ve got to be better. You can do whatever you want in playoffs. You can feel good about yourself at the end of the night. But if you don’t win, you don’t win.”

Getzlaf was understandably upset.

“I’m ticked off right now,” he said. “We’re in playoff time right now. There’s no excuses for anything. We’ve got to be better. I’ve got to be better. I expect my group to respond.”

Ducks forward Andrew Cogliano talked about Quick’s aggressiveness.

“There’s no excuses at this point,” he said. “We can say we’re playing good and taking the play to them.

“I had one in the third, I missed the net completely. He [Quick] comes out and challenges you…. He’s so aggressive, if you don’t show some patience or a little puck savvy, you’re not going score on him. He makes you score goals.”

Kings captain Dustin Brown echoed some of that in regard to Quick.

“I can’t speak to their frustration level,” he said. “I just know if we want to continue to win games we’re going to have to be a lot better on our defensive side. I’ve said this all already: We won a game tonight because we have the best goalie in the world.”

Brown talked about an amusing moment between Perry, who was caught on camera during the game pranking Kings forward Jeff Carter, his Team Canada teammate at the Olympics.

During the stop in action, at the bench, Perry squirted water into one of Carter’s gloves, on top of the bench.

“I heard about that,” Brown said, looking amused. “I think he did it to him [Carter] last game.”

That was the Perry’s best trick of the night.