Kings Lose to Canucks for Second Night in Row : Travel-Weary Players Put Up a Fight at the Forum, but Vancouver Wins, 5-3

The Kings are getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. They’ve heard enough about “the safety features of our aircraft” on their travels lately to qualify them as safety inspectors. The Kings are fed up with coming home to newspapers piled at their front doors.

The Kings are tired of being the Kings.

The butt end of a five-game trip jet-lagged the Kings Wednesday night, and the team discovered it had brought something undeclared through customs on the flight home from Vancouver early Wednesday morning. Another loss to the Canucks.

It was an item they were desperate to leave in Canada. The Kings (8-14-2) lost to Vancouver (7-14-2) for the second night in a row, this time a 5-3 game, before 8,797 in the Forum.

In contrast to the leg-weary Kings, the Canucks were as fleet of foot as they were sharp of elbow. Petri Skriko had a hat trick for the Canucks, his third in five games. His play was the only pure hockey a fan could bear to watch.

As is the case when these Smythe Division rivals meet, good manners are left at home. With 158 minutes of penalties, the penalty time more than doubled the hockey time in the game. None of the eight goals were scored with both teams at full and even-strength.

Still, it was another night of hard work for the Kings, who are fast becoming the NHL’s blue-collar heroes.

“I can’t be angry with them,” King Coach Pat Quinn said. They played their (bleep) off tonight. I was proud of their effort tonight. You can’t ask for more than that. I could ask for a little less penalties, I could ask for better officiating.

“Tonight, I felt that in the third period it was a team that maybe couldn’t go to the well anymore. They had gone to it all night. Tired bodies are tired minds. Tired minds make mistakes.”

The Kings were all remarking after Tuesday night’s 11-5 blowout in Vancouver that, “we’ll just put this behind us.” They’ll undoubtedly want to put Wednesday night’s game behind them as well.

Advice to the Kings: Don’t turn around.

The game started well for the Kings. They played two periods of good hockey and trailed, 2-1, going into the third period.

But they allowed four goals in the third, and scored only two. With 5:14 gone, Skriko scored his sixth power-play goal this season to give Vancouver a 3-1 lead.

Immediately after that goal, King defenseman Jay Wells got involved in his second fight of the night. After things were sorted out, Wells was hit with three penalties, and Vancouver’s Doug Lidster was called for two.

The Kings got the worst of it however, facing the prospect of killing a four-minute major penalty.

The worst happened, as far as the Kings were concerned. Barry Pederson had little opposition as he skated into the King zone and glided to the right. His shot went into an open net, giving the Canucks a 4-1 lead and the Kings a serious hole from which to climb out.

Somehow, the Kings began to claw their way to daylight.

Jim Fox got it started. He brought the puck into the Vancouver zone, jumped between two defenders, and scored at 9:12. Then a hooking penalty by the Canucks gave the Kings a four-on-three power play, and Dave Taylor scored to bring the Kings within one goal at 4-3.

Skriko, however, got the Canucks out of danger, getting his third goal at 14:11 to give the Canucks a 5-3 lead.

The bad blood between the teams surfaced again with 3:21 left. A fight broke out which brought seven penalties to the players and one each to the teams. The teams were cited for rule 54.E--failure to clear the area of a fight. Both teams will be fined $1,000 by the league.

The scuffles started early and persisted. But, unlike Tuesday night’s game in Vancouver, the Kings were very much in control in the first two periods. The first period was clean and featured tight checking. This time, by the Kings.

The Kings controlled the puck and won the battle for territory. However, several scoring chances were thwarted by excellent goaltending by the Canucks’ Richard Brodeur.

King Notes

Right wing Paul Guay, who made his first appearance in 10 games, was injured in his first shift Wednesday night. Guay sprained a ligament in his left knee and is doubtful for Saturday’s game against New Jersey. . . . Petri Skriko’s short-handed goal in the second period gave him five this season. He leads the league in that category. . . . Marcel Dionne and Luc Robitaille are inching up in the NHL scoring race. Going into Wednesday night’s game, Dionne was in a tie for sixth with 30 points, and Robitaille was in a tie for eighth with 28 points. Robitaille still leads all rookie scorers. Jimmy Carson is third.