Kings Are Win Away From Playoffs After Cooling Red-Hot Red Wings

As reward for winning their first division championship in 23 years, the Detroit Red Wings were given two days off in Los Angeles last week by Coach Jacques Demers.

The time away from the ice seemed to show in their play Saturday night at the Forum, where the Red Wings’ nine-game unbeaten streak was ended by the Kings, whose 7-4 victory before a crowd of 16,005 moved them within one victory of clinching a playoff spot.

“We went out onto the ice, and I noticed that a lot of their guys had suntans,” the Kings’ Jimmy Carson said.

Dave Taylor scored twice, and Luc Robitaille had one goal and three assists for the Kings in a game that was marred by several fights, a 10-man scrum that prompted referee Denis Morel to order both teams to their locker rooms in the first period, and 154 minutes in penalties.

“Very ugly,” Carson called it.

The loss was the first this month for the Red Wings, who had won six straight games and were 8-0-1 since their last loss on Feb. 27. They had allowed only 18 goals in their previous nine games.

“We’ve been on a tremendous high,” Demers said. “We just won the division and we’ve been here for a few days. . . . And every game is an emergency for the Kings.

“Not that we didn’t come to win, but we made some bad mistakes, and the Kings capitalized. From the beginning of the game, we were behind.”

The Kings opened a 3-0 lead against the Norris Division champions in the first 15 minutes 46 seconds.

“I remember the last time we played Detroit--they totally outclassed us,” Carson said of a 6-1 loss last month at the Forum. “It was like they had 10 men on the ice. But we had a real strong first shift and went from there.”

Taylor scored only 23 seconds into the game, re-directing a shot by Carson. Carson brought the puck down the right side and circled behind the net before pivoting in the left circle and whipping a 25-foot shot that caromed off Taylor and past goaltender Glenn Hanlon.

Robitaille scored his 44th goal at 11:16, deflecting a shot from the right point by Steve Duchesne as Red Wing defenseman Lee Norwood crashed into him. Hanlon appeared to be screened by the collision in front of the net.

However, when Ken Baumgartner scored for the Kings at 15:46, Hanlon had nobody to blame but himself.

Leaning so far to his left that he gave Baumgartner almost the entire other half of the net, Hanlon could do nothing but look on helplessly as Baumgartner scored his first National Hockey League goal, on a 45-foot wrist shot from the left point.

The Red Wings cut the lead to 3-1 at 17:00 after Tim Higgins had a 20-foot backhanded shot stopped by King goaltender Rollie Melanson. In attempting to clear the puck as he lay on the ice, Melanson swiped at it and inadvertently slid it into the Kings’ unprotected net.

It wasn’t until the 18:20 mark, though, that the real silliness began.

After a battle behind the Red Wings’ net that involved almost every player on the ice, Morel sent both teams to their locker rooms.

The ice was resurfaced during a 15-minute intermission, and after both teams returned to the ice, it was announced that nine penalties had been called, including the ejection of Detroit’s Joe Kocur and 10-minute misconducts against the Kings’ Larry Playfair and the Red Wings’ Norwood and Harold Snepsts.

The first period was then completed, and after a short break, the goaltenders switched nets to begin the second period.

Outshot in the first period, 19-5, the Red Wings cut their deficit to 3-2 on a short-handed goal at 1:27 of the second period by John Chabot, who circled all the way around the net before scoring on a 25-foot shot from the top of the slot.

The Kings, though, regained a three-goal advantage only a short time later, scoring a pair of power-play goals in a span of 2 minutes 40 seconds.

Taylor scored from the bottom of the right circle off a pass from Robitaille at 3:05. Then at 5:45, Taylor fed Duchesne, who scored on a shot from the slot.

Several more fights ensued before Shawn Burr, taking advantage of a two-man advantage for the Red Wings, pulled Detroit within 5-3, scoring a power-play goal on a rebound at 13:12.

After still another fight, and a five-minute, major, high-sticking penalty against the Red Wings’ Joe Murphy, Carson took a pass from Robitaille on a 2-on-1 breakaway and scored his 48th goal of the season at 19:44.