By John Reger

PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

LOS ANGELES (Ticker) -- Shane Doan probably wished he could play

against the Los Angeles Kings every night.

The captain scored a goal and set up another to lead the Phoenix

Coyotes to a 2-1 victory over the Kings on Friday.

Doan has more career points against the Kings than any other

team, notching 22 goals and 35 assists against Los Angeles

during his 13 NHL seasons - all spent with the Coyotes

franchise.

"We play them a lot," Doan said. "That's something, a team you

play a lot you want to compete against them. It's a tough

building for me to play in it seems, but somehow I've found

points."

Phoenix opened the scoring midway through the first period after

catching the Kings flatfooted. Doan led a 2-on-1 rush and

flicked a pass to Mueller, who slid a shot under Los Angeles

netminder Jonathan Quick's left skate.

"He's skating much better than he was earlier," Coyotes coach

Wayne Gretzky said of Mueller. "He's playing pretty well, the

fact he hasn't scored in a while is part of the equation. He's

getting a lot of chances and the fact that he finally got a

goal, maybe took the pressure off."

The Kings nearly had the equalizer in the second period on the

power play, but rookie defenseman Drew Doughty's slap shot from

the right point hit the goalpost.

Doan gave the Coyotes a 2-0 edge with 2:17 left in the middle

session with a power-play goal. He scored five seconds after

Kyle Quincey was called for roughing by redirecting Olli

Jokinen's slap shot.

Ilya Bryzgalov nearly recorded his second shutout in three

games, but the Kings ended his bid at 8:49 of the third period.

Defenseman Peter Harrold fired a slap shot from the right point

past Bryzgalov, who was screened by captain Dustin Brown.

"I didn't see it," Bryzgalov said. "I tried to find it, but I

only saw it when the puck was close to me. I tried to reach the

puck but it was too late."

Harrold almost tied the score breaking in on Bryzgalov with 3:25

remaining, but was turned away by the goalie. Bryzgalov made 24

saves.

"The team battled, we just came up a little short," Quick said.

"These are games that we need to win. Being division games,

it's a four-point game. We've got to refocus and go back into

Phoenix tomorrow and try to come out with a different outcome."

The Kings pulled Quick, who also finished with 24 stops, with 97

seconds remaining but could not get the tying goal.

"Well you can't play a game in the NHL and play only 20 minutes

and expect to win, those days are done," Kings coach Terry

Murray said. "You have to come and play right from the

beginning, you have to play 60 minutes hard, intense and very

heavy hockey.

"In the first two periods, we were not going, we didn't have it.

The third period was what we needed for the 60 minutes."