Kings Squander Advantage, Lose to Red Wings, 5-3

After spending an intoxicating 48 hours outside of last place this week, the Kings are back in the Smythe Division cellar.

Actually, the Vancouver Canucks put them there Thursday night when they beat the New Jersey Devils.

So, Friday night’s 5-3 loss to the Detroit Red Wings before a sellout crowd of 19,659 at the Joe Louis Arena didn’t move the Kings into the division basement--it only kept them there.

It did, however, show how they got there in the first place.

Detroit, extending its unbeaten streak to five games, got short-handed goals from Shawn Burr and Steve Yzerman in a 36-second span of the third period, the second with only 6:31 left.

In beating the Kings for only the fourth time in their last 18 meetings, the Norris Division leaders overcame deficits of 2-0 and 3-2, outscoring the Kings, 4-1, in the third period and 3-0 in the last 10:05.

All this with nine regulars out of the lineup, including No. 1 goaltender Greg Stefan, who sprained ligaments in his left leg Wednesday night in a 4-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues.

“We had a lot of scared kids out there,” Red Wing Coach Jacques Demers said. “This was as gutsy a performance as I’ve seen all year.”

For the Kings, it was a disappointing end to a four-game unbeaten streak, their longest of the season.

“Sometimes,” the Kings’ Jay Wells said, “you get into a roll and you’re working hard and you can’t do anything wrong, then you have two days off and you get self-satisfied or cocky.”

Self-satisfied?

Cocky?

The Kings still have the worst record in the National Hockey League.

And, although they have mostly improved in the last month under Coach Robbie Ftorek, their power-play unit has been all but powerless. In their last 84 manpower advantages, they have scored only 11 goals.

Still, when Detroit’s Kris King was called for charging Dean Kennedy with 8:19 left, the Kings figured to at least emerge from the two-minute advantage with the game still tied at 3-3.

Instead, Burr brought the puck down the right side on a 2-on-1 breakaway and got off two shots which were stopped by Glenn Healy before firing a third past the King goaltender.

“He shot the (second) one and I couldn’t find the puck,” Healy said. “It hit my pad and I didn’t know where it was. I guess it was laying right there.”

Burr put it into the net.

The Red Wings led, 4-3.

Thirty-six seconds later, Yzerman had no defenders to beat as he brought the puck down the left side, skated diagonally through the slot and beat Healy from the right side.

“I thought he might have passed it, but he made his deke and held onto it,” Healy said. “I had my stick right on the puck, but I couldn’t reach out any further. He held onto it until I ran out of stick and sent it back to the far side.”

The Red Wings led, 5-3.

Wells said the Kings, who lost a 3-2 lead when Brent Ashton scored on a deflection of a shot by Lee Norwood with 10:05 left, were impatient during the critical power play.

“We were trying to force things a little bit to open the game up for ourselves,” he said. “Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

“What usually happens is that it backfires. If you wait for your breaks, usually it works out better. We had been very patient in our last few games. Tonight, we just didn’t have it.”

Said Ftorek: “I don’t think we played a very good game. . . .

“It’s not one, two, three, four or five guys’ fault. We all are at fault because we didn’t play as well as we should have and we didn’t prepare as well as we should have.”

Ftorek said the Kings played “all right” in the first two periods, although they had some “lapses” in the second after building a 2-0 lead.

A radio reporter, obviously unprepared for Ftorek’s abrupt manner, asked if the coach had any other comments on the game.

“I wish we had won,” Ftorek said.

Where do the Kings go from here?

“Chicago,” Ftorek said.

King Notes The Kings, who are 13-25-5 and have given up a league-high 199 goals, play the Chicago Blackhawks Sunday night in Chicago Stadium. . . . The Red Wings lead the second-place St. Louis Blues by six points in the Norris Division race. . . . Detroit’s Steve Yzerman had a goal and an assist and has points in his last 21 games, a club record. During his streak, Yzerman has 18 goals and 27 assists. . . . The Red Wings were 0-3 against the Kings last season and had won only one of the previous eight meetings at Detroit. . . . The Red Wings are 9-1-2 at Joe Louis Arena since losing to the Boston Bruins Nov. 22. . . . The crowd was the largest ever to see the Red Wings play the Kings. The Red Wings have drawn an average of 19,571 per game, although the listed capacity is 19,275, and have drawn at least 19,000 to their last 36 games--32 of them sellouts. . . . Wayne McBean rejoined the Kings after helping Canada win the junior world championship. He was scratched, as he had been in two of his last three games before leaving for the tournament, which was played at Moscow. “The food was horrible,” McBean said of his experience in the Soviet Union. He lost eight pounds, but scored his first goal since leading Medicine Hat to the Western Hockey League championship last spring. . . . Former King goaltender Darren Eliot, signed by the Red Wings as a free agent last summer, was recalled Thursday from Adirondack of the American Hockey League, where he was 12-4-4 with a 3.00 goals-against average.