Healy’s Worth in Net Is Evident, Until Oilers Score Two Late Goals

The Kings, who were transformed into a contender when they traded for Wayne Gretzky last Aug. 9, underwent another change Feb. 22 when they acquired goaltender Kelly Hrudey from the New York Islanders.

“It took us from a team that was playing very well to a team that believed it could win the Stanley Cup,” said Marty McSorley, echoing the sentiments of almost everybody in the long-suffering organization.

The implication was clear: The Kings didn’t have the same kind of faith in Glenn Healy.

But with Hrudey suffering from the flu and unable to play, Healy was unexpectedly pressed into service Wednesday night in the opening game of the playoff series against the Edmonton Oilers. And for all but the last few minutes, he played brilliantly.

“He was terrific,” Oiler Coach Glen Sather said.

The Oilers, though, scored twice in the last four minutes for a 4-3 victory in Game 1 of the best-of-seven Smythe Division semifinal series.

“I was happy with the way the game went, except for the outcome,” said Healy, who spoke for most of a sellout crowd of 16,005.

Nobody could have expected him to play as well as he did.

Although he won 25 games in the regular season, Healy was ineffective after the announcement of the Hrudey deal, losing all four of his starts and compiling a 6.20 goals-against average and a .798 save percentage.

Meanwhile, Hrudey was 10-4-2 with an excellent 2.90 goals-against average, including a shutout, and a .904 save percentage.

He was 3-1 against the Oilers.

Healy had been 1-3.

“It’s been a very difficult time for me,” Healy said. “I had 25 wins with 20 games left and didn’t really get much of an opportunity to play after that. But I can’t be selfish.

“I seem to have adjusted.”

Healy didn’t find out until Wednesday morning, when Hrudey phoned in sick, that he would face the defending Stanley Cup champions.

And Healy didn’t feel his best, either. Only last Sunday, he missed a start at Vancouver because he had a 102-degree fever.

He hadn’t eaten much for two days.

“I’m still a little drained myself,” he said. “But I’m the better of the two of us, so I gave it my best shot.”

He and the Kings led, 3-2, until the Oilers’ Esa Tikkanen and Craig Simpson scored in a span of only 1 minute 7 seconds, Tikkanen on a rebound at 16:06 of the third period and Simpson on a shot from the right circle at 17:13.

“The rebound went out through a maze,” Healy said of Tikkanen’s goal. “Their guys went to the net and caused a big traffic jam. I don’t know where Tikkanen put it.”

Through Healy’s legs is where, but not until after he had crashed into the Kings’ second-year goaltender.

On Simpson’s goal, Healy said: “We had a defensive error, and they capitalized on a three-on-two (breakaway). They had a late trailer and made a nice pass. He had pretty much of an empty net to shoot at.”

Most of the night, though, the Oilers didn’t.

“It takes a long time to build confidence,” Healy said, “and only a short time to tear it down.”

In stopping 31 shots, he regained some of it.

But still he lost.

“Can you believe it?”owner Bruce McNall of the Kings asked. “We can’t get any luck at all.”

Depending on how far they advance, Wayne Gretzky could become the all-time playoff scoring leader on the Kings this season, surpassing Marcel Dionne, who had 43 points in 43 postseason games.

Gretzky had 43 points last season in 19 playoff games, including a National Hockey League record 31 assists.

The former Oiler, who established a National Hockey League record when he accumulated 47 points in 18 playoff games in 1985, has 253 points in 121 postseason games, including an assist Wednesday night against his ex-teammates.

The assist on Mike Krushelnyski’s third-period goal extended Gretzky’s point-producing streak in the playoffs to 18 consecutive games.

Former King Jimmy Carson, who was traded to the Oilers last August in the deal that brought Gretzky to the Kings, was on pace for a 60-goal season with 41 goals in 55 games but he scored only eight goals in the last 25 games of the regular season.

At one point, he went 12 games without a goal, the longest drought of his three-year career.

Carson’s recent struggles pale, though, in comparison to teammate Glenn Anderson’s.

Anderson, who averaged more than 44 goals in the previous seven seasons, got goals in only 12 of 79 games, including scoring droughts of 16 games and 13 games and, at the end of the regular season, 14 games.

He scored a career-low 16 goals.

And neither Anderson nor Carson scored in Game 1.

Goaltender Grant Fuhr made his 38th consecutive postseason start for the Oilers.

He is 31-6 in the streak, including a no-decision in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals last season, which was canceled midway through the game because of a power failure at the Boston Garden.