Scoring Touch Gone, Kings Fall to Islanders

It’s as apparent as the ache in Wayne Gretzky’s left side, the pain in Tim Watters’ neck or the lump in Glenn Healy’s throat.

The King Capades, the flashiest show on skates, has taken a hiatus, at least temporarily. After scoring goals faster than owner Bruce McNall can count the coins in his collection, the Kings came within 4 minutes Thursday night of being shut out by the New York Islanders, the team with the worst record in the National Hockey League.

Then, after ex-Islander John Tonelli scored twice within 69 seconds to avoid the Kings’ first shutout in 219 games, King defenseman Steve Duchesne did everything short of slipping a banana peel in front of the Islanders’ David Volek in an effort to trip him but failed, allowing Volek to score the empty-net goal with 22 seconds left that sealed the Islanders’ 4-2 win over the Kings before 14,552 fans at Nassau Coliseum.

“I tried to trip him,” said Duchesne, the only man back after the Kings blitzed Islander goalie Kelly Hrudey for a full 40 seconds in an effort to score the tying goal.

“I wanted to make him fall, but I couldn’t. He’s very strong. I just lost my grip, and they scored.”

The loss, the second straight on this trip, dropped the Kings 10 points behind first-place Calgary, a 7-2 winner over Boston, in the Smythe Division.

“The last couple of games have not been good for us,” said Tonelli, who scored 2 goals here the last time he faced his former mates in a 4-3 win in December.

“We’re losing a lot of little battles out there, and when you’re losing the little battles they grow to be big ones.”

The fight is that much tougher with a subpar Gretzky, who didn’t skate in practice Wednesday, went 2 periods Thursday night without a shot on net, then hit a post in the third before finally assisting on Tonelli’s second goal.

Gretzky has a pulled muscle in his left side, and while he said that’s no reason to stop playing, his game has clearly suffered. He was on the ice for 4 goals by the St. Louis Blues Tuesday night in the Kings’ 5-2 defeat by the Blues, and he was on for all 4 Islander goals.

The Islanders took a 2-0 lead on power-play goals by Brent Sutter and Pat LaFontaine in the first period, then put Healy under siege in the second period, outshooting the Kings, 18-4.

While the Kings failed to get a shot in the last half of the period, Pat Flatley made it 3-0 at 16:13, scoring from right in front after Gretzky tipped an Islander pass directly to Islander defenseman Richard Pilon.

Healy was flattened with 5:27 left in the game when a rising slapshot by Sutter from just inside the blue line struck him in the throat. He remained in the game, though he was in no mood to sing in the showers afterward. “We’re not surprising anybody anymore,” Healy said. “Things came easy for us early in the season--we scored a lot of goals. We have to start doing the small things again to turn things around.”

Other teams, Tonelli said, are taking advantage of the Kings physically. The absence of the Kings’ toughest defenseman, Ken Baumgartner, still recuperating from the flu, was compounded by the unavailability of Watters, who strained his neck in St. Louis and is on a day-to-day basis.

“The Islanders were getting the best of things bodywise,” Tonelli said. “They were checking us closely, keeping us from going up (the) ice. We have to learn to fight that off and not accept it.”

The Islanders, who outshot the Kings, 38-23, kept getting the best of the Kings. Hrudey robbed Duchesne with a glove save of his blast 4 minutes into the final period, and Mike Krushelnyski and Gretzky hit posts before Tonelli finally broke through, stealing a bad clearing pass from Bryan Trottier and beating Hrudey with a slapshot from the top of the left circle at 16:06.

“You don’t see Trots make a mistake like that very often,” said Tonelli of the embattled Trottier, a long-time All-Star whose playing time has been cut considerably. “It had to be an honest mistake, because you never see him make a mistake like that.”

Tonelli took a pass from Gretzky and pulled the trigger again from about 15 feet away to make it 3-2 at 17:15, and he was on the ice for the Kings’ last futile flurry.

“We have to understand that the last half of the season will be much tougher for us,” Tonelli said. “We have to pick it up a step.”

And it’s no time to take a break, Gretzky said.

“It’s sore,” he said of his side. “But you’ve got to play 80 games. It’s as simple as that.”