The view from Vancouver

The Kings will practice today at Rogers Arena at 1:30 p.m. As for last night, Roberto Luongo set the tone for the Vancouver Canucks early, as he made three saves in the game’s first minute. All of the shots easily could have led to goals, and in all reality, Luongo was the biggest reason why the game was tied after one period, instead of the Kings holding the lead. Luongo ultimately got beat on two power-play goals — including a 5-on-3 goal — and Dustin Penner’s goal, which came off an unlikely deflection from Jeff Carter’s skate. Point being, any questions about Luongo’s playoff readiness were answered. As for the rest of the Canucks, it’s less clear. The Canucks went 0-for-5 on the power play, but the Kings do have a pretty good penalty-kill unit. Several times, particularly early in the third period, the Canucks were a heartbeat away from scoring a huge goal, but the Kings defended well in front of their net and Jonathan Quick made some tough stops. The Canucks will be better in Game 2, but which way will they go? They already tried to rough it up a bit with the Kings. One clear area of improvement for the Canucks will be staying out of the penalty box. Can they get back to their dangerous skill game? Here’s how the Vancouver Province and Vancouver Sun covered last night’s game, followed by some additional postgame quotes from the Canucks…

The Vancouver Province’s Canucks coverage

The Vancouver Sun’s Canucks coverage

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COACH ALAIN VIGNEAULT

(on the game…) “Well, obviously I think that they played a better overall game than we did tonight. You’ve got to give them credit. They came out real hard. In the first period, a couple unfortunate swats at pucks ended up on the other side, which gave them a couple power plays. That and, obviously, they want to protect the goalies and you can’t stop in front. So we got a penalty there and we ended up with four penalties in the first period, which is a lot. Then we followed it up with nine more minutes in the second. We spent a lot of energy tonight trying to kill those penalties. Obviously I thought our penalty killing did a pretty good job, but they were the better team tonight.’’

(on having so much penalty-kill time…) “Well, obviously you can’t take the number of penalties that we took tonight. … Instead of attacking, we were killing penalties. That’s definitely not what we want to do. We will address it tomorrow and take it from there.’’

(on Roberto Luongo’s game…) “Very good, like he’s been all year.’’

(on the game…) “In the first period, they came out strong. The penalties we took in the first period, two were unfortunate. The other one, (the puck) is bouncing at their blue line, Sami (Salo) can’t put the handle on it and he’s going to hook the guy, and the first one was Kesler stopping up in front of the goaltender. So those are four penalties that, in theory, we could have gone without, but we didn’t. We had to kill, and we followed it up with three more big penalties in the second.’’

(on the third period…) “Once we killed off the five minutes, where we only gave up one goal, the last two minutes (of the second period) we spent in their end. We had some quality moments in there, not a lot of shots but we were able to tie it up 2-2. It’s a tie game going into the third. We make a bad play on their winning goal and we don’t recover.’’

I haven’t seen it, but I was told it was a penalty. I was told it was a good call.

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HENRIK SEDIN

(on the game…) “Well, we’ve got to stay out of the box. That’s number one. We gave up two 5-on-3s and a five-minute power play, and it gets us out of rhythm. We’ve got to use some guys a lot and other guys not at all. That’s the main thing.’’

(on the game…) “I think 5-on-5, we didn’t have a lot of trouble with their offense, but we can create a little more offense ourselves, 5-on-5, and like I said if we can stay out of box we are going to be in this series again.’’

(on whether the Canucks were surprised by anything the Kings did…) “Nothing at all. They’ve got a great team over there. We’ve faced adversity before this year. We’re down 1-0. They took over home-ice advantage, and now we have to come back in the next game and play better.’’

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ROBERTO LUONGO

(on trailing in the series…) “It’s fine. You face different scenarios every time, and we’ve got to be able to handle all types of scenarios. I think we have the mental toughness in this locker room to regroup and come back next game.’’

(on the game…) “We had to kill a lot of penalties, and that takes a lot of energy. Unfortunately, it took away from our momentum.’’

(on Dustin Penner’s goal…) “He passed it and it hit his [Jeff Carter’s] skate and right on his [Dustin Penner’s] stick. So, it was kind of a lucky play, but that stuff happens.’’

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ALEXANDRE BURROWS

(on the game…) “We can be better than this. We didn’t play our best. We spent a lot of time in the penalty box, wasting a lot of energy on the PK. We’ll have to regroup, watch the tape tomorrow and get better for Game 2.’’