After Waiting for Eight Games, Kings Get a Whale of a Win, 4-3

The Kings have been like bumbling Boy Scouts who have tried to be good--honest, they have--but who never could seem to get it right. They had gone eight games without a win.

Saturday night, they finally got their merit badge--for patience. After five weeks of fighting to the brink and losing, the Kings won. It wasn’t exactly the deliverance Coach Pat Quinn had yearned for, but he’ll take it. It was a 4-3 victory over the Hartford Whalers before 11,976 fans at the Forum.

How the Kings got the Whalers to assume the Kings’ identity is anybody’s guess. For once it was the Kings, now with a 4-10-1 record, who came from behind, scoring three goals in the third period. For once it was the Kings who came up with the timely goals, the key defensive plays.

How did the Whalers, who are 5-4-3, look while masquerading as Kings? “We didn’t play very well,” said goaltender Mike Liut, who, for one, did play well.

Liut faced 44 shots, the most the Kings have put out this season. But the four goals he allowed were owing, in equal measure, to a defense that shredded as the game wore on and to a King offense that came to life.

“We were starting to press a little bit, starting to get frustrated before this,” King captain Dave Taylor said. “We were starting to think, ‘What do we have to do to win a hockey game?’ This feels good.”

What the Kings did was use talent that had lain dormant. It awoke Saturday night at the most opportune moments.

Hartford led, 2-1, after two periods. Then the Whalers began to crack. The Kings tied it on their second power-play chance in the third period. Marcel Dionne took a pass from Bernie Nicholls and scored at 12:08.

“We kept our intensity,” Dionne said. “That’s what good teams do.”

Nicholls set up the tiebreaking goal nearly two minutes later. He picked up a lose puck and carried it up the middle of the ice and into the Whaler zone.

As Nicholls faded to the right of the net, he flipped a pass to wing Sean McKenna, and McKenna scored to make it 3-2. It was a lead that, for once, the Kings did not lose.

Jimmy Carson made it 4-2 on a slap shot at 17:43, and with one second left in the game, Hartford’s Paul MacDermid scored from a pile of bodies in front of the King net.

The hard-working, hard-checking Whalers left their marks on the Kings--black and blue marks. The Whalers were penalized 12 times for 35 minutes, giving the Kings six power plays. The Kings scored on two.

It began as a physical game, with the Kings losing defenseman Jay Wells only 33 seconds into the first period. Wells was chasing the puck in the King zone and collided with MacDermid. Both players hit the ice hard, but Wells had to be helped off the ice while MacDermid received a five-minute major penalty for elbowing.

Wells suffered a mild concussion and did not see further action.

The penalty gave the Kings five minutes with a man advantage. However, with the players the Kings have, that’s seldom an advantage. The Kings got off only four shots during the power play as the Whalers’ aggressive and persistent penalty killers intercepted passes, forced bad ones and generally intimidated the Kings.

“They are so big and strong that you have to keep moving,” Dionne said. Even as moving targets, the Kings got checked hard.

Hartford scored the only goal of the first period as Ray Ferraro tipped in a shot by Dave Babych at 15:12.

Hartford scored in the second period on its first power-play opportunity. And, in a twist, it came at a time when the Kings were receiving fierce checking from their penalty-killing unit. Whaler left wing John Anderson sent a cross-ice pass to Stewart Gavin, who scored at 6:12 to give Hartford a 2-0 lead.

The Kings scored on their first power play of the second period and their third of the game. They had a five-on-three opportunity for 57 seconds but couldn’t do anything with it.

Then, still with a manpower advantage, the Kings parked in front of the net, sending shot after shot at Liut. They finally scored after Morris Lukowich passed to Carson, who passed to Dave Taylor. Taylor’s goal made it 2-1, Hartford.

The Kings cleaned up their penalty killing, which had allowed six goals in the last two games. On Hartford’s third power play in the second period, the Kings were so much in control that they mounted two short-handed rushes at Liut.

The Whalers were outshot in both periods. Liut had 21 shots taken on him in the second period alone, three more than Hartford got off in two periods.

King Notes

The King defense is ranked last in the NHL, allowing 66 goals against, and last in goaltending, averaging 4.61 goals a game. . . . Defenseman Grant Ledyard suffered a cut on the bridge of his nose in the first period but returned to the game. . . . Jim Fox experienced back spasms and left the bench in the first period. He was later taken to Centinela Hospital Medical Center for X-rays, which were negative, and was found to have sustained strained muscles in his rib cage