Kings Battle Back, Lose War, 7-6 : Oilers Blow 5-Goal Lead, Pull Out Win

Things were going badly for the Kings Saturday night until their new tough guy got beaten up. Jay Miller took it on the chin. Again and again. And on the side of the head. Again and again. Then he went to his knees on the ice.

As fellow tough guy Marty McSorley explained: “That was a big sacrifice. For a big guy like that to stand in there and take it, to turn his cheek like that--that was a big, big play for our hockey club. We have to be tough. We always have to be intelligent about it.”

Or, as Miller put it: “Obviously I’m a much better fighter than that, but when we’re down 5-nothing, I’m not about to put us in a bigger hole with a penalty. When I went down, I thought, the fans might not like this now, but they’ll appreciate it later.”

The sellout Forum crowd of 16,005 did appreciate it later, when the fight that Miller threw so blatantly resulted in a 5-minute power play that brought the Kings to life.

The comeback effort came up short, though. The Kings lost to Edmonton, 7-6. But they led the Oilers a merry chase after Miller took his beating, 1:27 into the second period.

Bernie Nicholls scored 2 quick goals on the power play, his 49th and 50th of the season in his 51st game, tying a club record. And by the end of the period, which the Kings dominated, they were within a goal, 6-5.

Miller scored the goal that tied the game, 6-6, in the third period. Yes, Jay Miller. The guy acquired from the Boston Bruins just a week ago for his muscle. The enforcer. The guy with all the penalty minutes and all the bruises on his knuckles. The guy who had 2 goals for the Bruins all season had 2 for the Kings Saturday night and now has 3 for the Kings in 1 week.

With 9:05 played in the third period, the unlikely hero slid the tying goal under the glove of Oiler goalie Grant Fuhr.

In a fit of honesty, Nicholls said: “To tell you the truth, when it was 6-6, I thought we’d end up with a tie. I thought that would be the end of our comeback. Grant Fuhr is like that. He’ll give up some goals when the game is far apart, but when it gets close, he’s tough. I didn’t think he’d give up another goal.”

Fuhr didn’t, but the Kings did. Craig Simpson got the winning goal for the Oilers at 11:53, taking a pass from former King Jimmy Carson in front of the goal and deflecting it off the pants of King goalie Glenn Healy and into the net.

The Kings are 0-5-1 in their last 6 games, their worst slump of the season. But the comeback gave them more than a glimmer of hope.

“If the Kings of the past were down, 5-0, it would be all over, but not now,” said Nicholls, a King of the past who likes the Kings of the present much better. “There’s a lot of heart here. We’re not quitting. We might have played (pretty badly) at the start of this game, but we know we’re better than that. This team is never quitting.”

Healy agreed, saying that the Kings picked up confidence as the game wore on.

“The way we came back showed the pride and the character of this team,” he said. “We were making a lot of mistakes in the first period, but we had them running around in the second and third.”

Still, though, they came up short. So far this season, the Kings are 1-3 against Wayne Gretzky’s old teammates, the defending Stanley Cup champions and the team the Kings are most likely to meet in the first round of the playoffs.

“If we meet them in the playoffs, that’s fine,” Healy said. “We can beat them.”

Edmonton Coach Glen Sather liked the way Esa Tikkanen held Gretzky to just 3 assists.

“It has always surprised me over the years why more people don’t do that to Wayne and why more people don’t run into him and knock him off the puck,” he said. “He’s a great player, but you can rest assured that there’s gonna be a lot of people that are gonna be banging into him from now on.”

While Gretzky was being knocked around, the likes of Miller and McSorley were scoring for the Kings. And not by accident.

McSorley said: “The reason we were scoring is because our goal scorers are sacrificing. Forechecking, backchecking, taking the hit. They were sacrificing to get us the puck.”

After the Kings fell behind, 5-0, the game turned around when Oiler Mike Ware got a 5-minute penalty for fighting early in the second period. Ware pummeled Miller until the officials intervened. After Ware’s 2-minute penalty for elbowing and Miller’s 2-minute penalty for roughing canceled each other out, the Kings had a 5-minute power play.

Nicholls’ goals got the Kings started. And Luc Robitaille gave the Kings their third power play goal in a row, and their third goal in a span of 3:07, after a holding call on Carson. Gretzky had assists on all 3 goals, which cut the Oilers’ lead to 5-3.

Jari Kurri gave the Oilers their only goal of the second period, skating at Healy from the left side to make it 6-3. But former Oiler McSorley struck back with a couple of big shots from his defensive position at the top of the right circle. His first shot, from just inside the blue line at 13:45, made its way through traffic and past Fuhr. His second was deflected in by Miller at 17:41.

In the second period, the Kings outshot the Oilers, 24-6. The Kings, who had been outshot in 16 of their last 18 games, had not had 24 shots in a period all season. For the game, the Kings had a season-high 47 shots to the Oilers’ 32. Nicholls took 13 shots, breaking Marcel Dionne’s club record, set in 1981.

The Kings were outshot, outskated, outplayed, outsmarted and outfought in the first period as the Oilers took a 3-0 lead on goals by Dave Hunter, Miroslav Frycer and Simpson.

As a result of McSorley’s double minor for roughing at the end of the first period--after McSorley hooked an arm around the neck of Kevin McClelland and tried to dump him over the wall in front of the Oiler bench--the Oilers had 3 minutes 55 seconds of power play at the start of the second period.

Carson scored 2 power play goals within 16 seconds against his old teammates, at 1:03 and 1:19, to give the Oilers their 5-0 lead.

King Notes

With his second goal Saturday night, Bernie Nicholls tied the club record for the fastest 50 goals. Charlie Simmer also had 50 goals in 51 games during the 1980-81 season. . . . Ken Baumgartner, who had not played for more than three weeks as he recovered from pneumonia, lasted a little less than one period before being tossed for fighting. . . . New King Steve Kasper missed the game because of illness. . . . Dave Taylor and Igor Liba are still out, Taylor with an inflamed knee and Liba with a mildly separated shoulder. . . . There are still tickets available for Tuesday night’s game against Calgary, the leader in the Smythe Division.