SHAKY GRIP ON CUP : Oilers Had Everything Going Their Way Before Letting the Kings Get Away

The Edmonton Oilers had it in front of them.

Their Smythe Division semifinal series against the Kings was waiting to be wrapped up Thursday night at the Northlands Coliseum, where the defending Stanley Cup champions had won 14 consecutive playoff games.

The Oilers, though, were shut out in the last 59 minutes 27 seconds and were beaten at home in the playoffs for the first time since May 26, 1987, when the Philadelphia Flyers outscored them, 4-3, in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup championship series.

How did they feel?

Most didn’t want to talk about it.

The Oilers’ leader, Mark Messier, was dressed and out the door before reporters were allowed into the locker room.

Teammates hid in areas off-limits to the media.

The Kings’ 4-1 victory evened the best-of-seven series at 3-3 and forced a deciding game Saturday night at the Forum.

“It’s very frustrating for us,” the Oilers’ Jimmy Carson said. “We’re disappointed. We wanted to finish it off here. We had a great opportunity. Now we’ve got to do it the hard way.”

Or not at all.

After building a 3-1 lead in the series, the Oilers are on the verge of being eliminated from the playoffs.

They’ve lost two straight games.

In winning the Stanley Cup for the fourth time in five years last season, they lost only twice in 18 playoff games.

What will it take for them to win Game 7 in Los Angeles?

“Maybe I’m the wrong guy to ask,” said Carson, formerly a member of the Kings, who had lost seven straight postseason road games before rallying from a 1-0 deficit Thursday night. “I’ve never been in that situation.”

Most of the Oilers have.

“L.A. came in here and had to win and they did,” Oiler Coach Glen Sather said. “We’ll just have to go down there and do the same thing.

“We knew going into this series that it wasn’t going to be easy. But if we’ve got any mettle, we’ll go down there and win the game.”

Sather is concerned about the Oilers’ lack of productivity.

Edmonton has scored only three goals in two games and in the first two periods of Game 6 had only nine shots on goal.

“You don’t score on any of the shots that you don’t take,” Sather said. “We haven’t taken enough shots. We threw the puck around a lot tonight, and when we had opportunities to shoot, we didn’t shoot.

“For a team that usually takes a lot of shots and scores a lot of goals . . . we’ve stopped scoring.”

The Oilers, though, didn’t lack opportunities.

In fact, a point-blank shot by Jari Kurri that ricocheted off the left post early in the second period would have put the Oilers ahead, 2-0, and might have finished off the Kings, Sather suggested.

“That would have been the series,” he said. “They would have folded the tents, more than likely, and we would have gotten better.”

Instead, the Kings got stronger.

“We seemed to get tired, especially in the second period,” Sather said. “That really surprised me. We’ve been going with four lines most of the series and they’ve mostly been using three.”

Mike Allison, who had played in only two previous games because of knee and back injuries, finally pulled the Kings even at 16:22 of the second period, dragging Oiler defenseman Randy Gregg around the back of the net before slipping a shot past Oiler goaltender Grant Fuhr.

“He could probably do that 100 times and he wouldn’t score again,” Sather said of Allison.

This, though, was not to be the Oilers’ night.

The Oilers were impressed by the capacity crowd of 16,005 at the Forum for the Kings’ 4-2 victory Tuesday night in Game 5.

“It’s nice to see a building that doesn’t need a noise meter,” Oiler farmhand Daryl Reaugh told the Edmonton Journal.

Despite the success of the Oilers, who have won four Stanley Cups in five years, crowds at the Northlands Coliseum are mostly subdued.

The Kings last reached the seventh game of a playoff series in 1976, losing the deciding game of a quarterfinal series to the Boston Bruins.

The Oilers have never played a seventh game on the road.