Kings Make Comeback but Miss by Inches, 4-3

Thursday night’s game against the Winnipeg Jets was not one the Kings will remember for their own lurching effort.

Rather, they will measure it in the width of a goal post.

After a half-hearted effort for most of the game, the Kings wrestled into a postion to get the tying goal when Grant Ledyard let loose one of his vicious slap shots in the final seconds of the game. The shot hit the right post and glanced off.

It was not the first shot by the Kings that caromed off a post Thursday night. For that and other reasons, the Jets avenged Tuesday night’s 8-3 loss to the Kings with a 4-3 win before a rowdy crowd of 10,405 at the Forum.

“It was a game of inches,” King assistant coach Phil Myre said.

Inches and minutes.

The Kings were sluggish and disinterested for much of the game and fell behind, 4-1. Then, with little time left to make up the deficit, they came to life.

Bryan Erickson, whose wife, Diane, gave birth to the couple’s third son Wednesday, celebrated by putting the Kings back into the game by scoring his second goal with a little more than a minute to go. His other goal came in the waning moments of the second period.

The Kings continued to pressure Jet goaltender Daniel Berthiaume, and Ledyard’s shot was the final chance at a tie for the Kings.

The Kings (25-29-7) have their special teams to blame for a portion of the loss. They allowed the Jets (34-23-6) three power-play goals on six chances. Conversely, the Kings failed to score on six short-handed chances.

Winnipeg had come into the third period holding a 4-2 lead. The period contained the Kings’ best play of the night. It came too late, however.

Winnipeg has mountainous players, and they use them to build huge checking lines. In addition, they have 6-foot 5-inch Jim Kyte and a few of his tall teammates on defense.

Mysteriously, Winnipeg’s game plan Tuesday night was not set around this size difference. That was altered Thursday night.

“We started too slow,” King Coach Mike Murphy said. “We put ourselves in the hole.”

A reversal of Tuesday night’s scoring chronology changed matters in favor of the Jets. In their loss Tuesday, the Jets scored just seconds into the game. The Kings then went on a scoring rampage.

Thursday night, King rookie Jimmy Carson scored 39 seconds into the game, but then the Kings allowed four Winnipeg goals before scoring again at the end of the second.

Carson’s goal was the game’s first shot on goal. The ensuing events set the tone for the rest of the night: The Kings failed to score on a power play; the Jets scored on a power play. Murphy said the Kings have not run a power play in practice for some time. “I’ve let it slide a bit, and it showed this evening,” he said.

Winnipeg’s first score came from the reliable Dale Hawerchuk, whose power-play goal at 6:58 was his 40th of the season.

King goaltender Rollie Melanson was sharp all night, but he didn’t get any help from his busy defensemen. Unlike Tuesday night, the Jets Thursday night took advantage of their superior size to knock the Kings off the puck, and their relentlessly forechecking forwards wreaked havoc in the King zone.

From that 1-1 juncture in the first period, the Jets scored three more goals, and with each score the Kings’ play grew more ragged and more desperate.

The Kings were frustrated, too, by what they perceived as one-sided officiating.

Paul MacLean’s power-play goal at 12:53 ended the scoring in the first period. The power play was made possible by an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty assessed on Melanson.

The goalie said a Jet “took me out of the play” before MacLean even got his shot off.

Murphy, too, was displeased with the officiating. “I think that this particular referee comes out here (to Southern California) and sunbathes,” he said. “His face is red. I don’t know if he’s sunbathing or on vacation.”

The Kings failed to capitalize on a 5-on-3 late in the period.

It was more of the same in the second period. Doug Smail scored for Winnipeg to make it 3-1, and the Jets struck on the power play again, on Dave Ellett’s goal at 14:37.

The Kings’ second goal was an example of what they can do on offense, but didn’t do often enough Thursday night. Marcel Dionne brought the puck up the ice and left it for Steve Duchesne, who passed off to Erickson, who punched the puck high into the net to bring the Kings to 4-2 at the end of the second period.

King Notes General Manager Rogie Vachon said the Kings’ search for an assistant coach is not faring well. “It’s a bad time of year; everyone’s under contract,” Vachon said. The Kings have been without one assistant since Mike Murphy assumed coaching duties Jan. 10. Vachon said that it was likely the team would finish the season without a second assistant and the team would hire “probably in the summer.”