Kings Take Steam Out of Flames : Tonelli Has 3 Goals Robitaille Adds 2 in 7-3 Win for L.A.

John Tonelli got his first hat trick for the Kings Tuesday night, leading his teammates to a 7-3 victory at the Forum over the Calgary Flames, a team that Tonelli used to play for. A team he understands.

“They have a nucleus of good, grinding-type players,” Tonelli said. “They wanted to distract us and get us off our game.

“We fell into that the last couple of games.”

The Kings fell into it more than Coach Robbie Ftorek would have liked, but he wasn’t complaining after the victory that made the Kings the first team in the National Hockey League to beat the Flames twice this season. “We took a lot of penalties we didn’t want to take, but we did a good job of killing them.”

The player under siege was King goalie Glenn Healy, who was fighting Flames out of his territory all night long.

“They’re notorious for that,” Healy said. “Tonight they went extra out of their way to create commotion in front of the net. I try not to get too wrapped up in that. Some goaltenders let that get to them. I was expecting it tonight.”

A total of 47 penalties were called, 25 on the Flames for a total of 85 minutes, and 22 on the Kings for 66 minutes.

“We knew we needed to play a very disciplined game, maybe turn the other cheek a little bit,” Healy said. “We tried to do that, but they sucked us into a couple of penalties.”

Calgary leads the Smythe Division (and the league) with a record of 23-6-5. The Kings are second in the Smythe Division (third in the league) with a record of 22-12-1.

In a matchup that drew a sellout crowd of 16,005, the NHL’s highest scoring team outplayed the league’s best defensive team. Calgary’s goaltending duo of Rick Wamsley and Mike Vernon each played, but neither could stop the Kings. It was the first time this season that the Flames had allowed 7 goals in a game.

Together, Wamsley and Vernon have a 2.56 goals against average. Tuesday, Wamsley gave up the first 3 goals and Vernon gave up the last 4.

The Kings’ victory snapped Vernon’s 12-game unbeaten string.

Healy faced 35 shots to their combined 26.

Said Tonelli: “We know we have offense. We can score goals. But we need to get used to playing good, playoff-type hockey like we did tonight.”

The Flames made their goalie change at 9:32 of the second period, right after Luc Robitaille had scored his second goal of the night to give the Kings a 3-2 lead.

Robitaille had also given the Kings a 1-0 lead in the first period, intercepting a pass from Jamie Macoun and shooting it, on the spot, past Wamsley.

The skirmishes began before the first period was out.

McSorley took exception to the elbow Tim Hunter put in his face, and he pounced on Hunter, knocking him to the ice and punching away. Hunter got 2 minutes for roughing and McSorley got 5 minutes for fighting at 16:51. That would have given the Flames 3 minutes of a power play had Al MacInnis not been given 2 minutes for hooking at 18:14.

The Kings ended up with a 4-3 advantage as the period wound down and for the first 14 seconds of the second period.

When McSorley finally came out of the penalty box 1:51 into the second period, the Kings had succeeded in killing the penalty. But just 5 seconds later, Gary Suter tied the game at 1-1, firing a left-handed slapshot that tipped off Healy’s pad and dropped into the net.

The Flames took a brief 2-1 lead at 7:50 of the second period, taking advantage of their third straight power play. The shot by Brad McCrimmon bounced in off King defenseman Steve Duchesne.

Tonelli got that back for the Kings, though, at 8:24, flipping a rebound over Wamsley, who had gone to the ice to stop a shot by Duchesne.

After Robitaille’s second goal had brought on Vernon, Tim Laidlaw stretched the Kings’ lead to 4-2, skating through the right circle and putting the puck into the right corner.

As the second period ended, Healy was defending not only the goal, but himself, as the Flames knocked and jostled and crowded him, and finally sat on him.

He complained, to no avail.

Tonelli gave the Kings a 3-goal lead with his second goal 2:49 into the third period.

Healy was injured soon after when he made a stop and Hunter came up and hit him from behind. According to Healy: “He came over the top of me and then kept going with his stick. My helmet came off and he kind of rapped my head on the ice.”

Healy has a cut over his right eye, but trainer Pete Demers had trouble tending to it because of the fracas taking place around the goal. That little standoff ended with Hunter getting 2 minutes for roughing and a 10-minute misconduct, and Dale DeGray of the Kings getting 2 minutes for holding, 2 minutes for roughing and a 10-minute misconduct.

The Flames managed to squeeze in a goal before the next fight broke out.

Healy had lost his stick trying to knock a puck behind the net, and he had to come back and face Hakan Loob’s shot to his stick side with no stick. Loob won that round to put the Flames within 2 goals at 5-3.

The next time the Flames skated at Healy, they just kept coming, knocking him to the ice.

That, of course, sparked another confrontation that ended with both penalty boxes packed and the Kings on a power play.

Those penalties had ended, though, when Tonelli completed his hat trick, giving the Kings their 3-goal margin at 9:19.

“Every time we coughed it up or made a mistake, they capitalized,” Calgary Coach Terry Crisp said. “We made a few mistakes, and you cannot get away with that against the Los Angeles Kings.”

King Notes

John Tonelli’s hat trick Tuesday night was the fifth of his career. His last was Nov. 28, 1987, when he was playing for Calgary against the Kings. . . . Tuesday night’s sellout at the Forum was the Kings’ seventh of the season, 2 more than they had all last season and closing in on the record of 8, which they had in 1984-85.