STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS: KINGS vs. FLAMES : Kings Sit Tight, So It’s Calgary’s Night, 4-3 : Flames Catch Fire and Win in Overtime

The Kings had the lead, but they sat on it. They sat and watched and saw the game pass them by.

They watched as the puck took a fluke bounce off a metal bar and landed on Kelly Hrudey’s doorstep for the tying goal by Gary Roberts with less than two minutes left in regulation.

And they watched as a tug on Marty McSorley’s arm botched a clearing pass in front of the King net, allowing the puck to trickle to Calgary Flames winger Colin Patterson for the pass that Doug Gilmour turned into a 4-3 Calgary victory here Tuesday night in the first game of their best-of-seven Smythe Division playoff finals.

The Kings had taken a one-goal lead, 3-2, on a goal by Jim Wiemer at 15:23 of the second period. Apparently satisfied, they then set about the task of protecting that lead. Sitting on a lead and ending up, on this night, right flat on their unlucky butts before a sellout crowd of 20,062 at the Saddledome.

They played the third period as if they were killing a 20-minute penalty.

“We did kind of go into a shell,” King Coach Robbie Ftorek admitted. “We have a tendency to change sometimes and go away from our game plan. It’s a normal kind of response to want to protect a lead. They kind of forced it. But we found ourselves in more of a shell than we wanted to be in.

“It’s kind of a mental breakdown.”

The Flames didn’t seem to mind. They like a defensive style of play. They’re very good at being patient and waiting for the lucky bounce. They were in no big hurry to let the Kings out of the Saddledome with a victory, something the Kings hadn’t accomplished in their last seven trips here. Now, they have been burned eight times in their last eight tries on Flames ice.

The Flames had won an overtime game here Saturday night in Game 7 of their division semifinal series with Vancouver just to get to this series.

While the Kings were out there being careful, spreading 27 shots over three periods and an overtime, the Flames were attacking. They aimed 47 shots at Hrudey.

The Flames picked up heat as the game went on. The Kings’ temperature dipped.

It was a game of bumps and grinds and checks, puck dumping and near misses until 16:20, when little Theoren Fleury took a puck that had been bounced off the boards behind the King net by Hakan Loob and shot it off Hrudey into the net.

Fleury, a feisty 5-foot 6-inch center, who played his first NHL game Jan. 3 and who had just 14 goals in all that time with the Flames, recorded his third goal of the playoffs. His goal came on a power play resulting from an interference call on Dale DeGray.

The Flames’ lead didn’t last long, though.

Bernie Nicholls cashed in on the Kings’ next power play, making goalie Mike Vernon pay for the delay of game penalty he got for flipping the puck over the glass. Just 15 seconds into that power play, Wayne Gretzky sent a pass from the right boards to defenseman Steve Duchesne, who poked a pass to Nicholls at the top of the left circle. Nicholls shot off the pass to beat Vernon and tie the game, 1-1, at 18:00.

In the second period, the Kings’ new-found star, Chris Kontos, put the Kings ahead, 2-1, when he knocked in an airborne shot by Gretzky.

A hooking penalty on defenseman Tim Watters gave the Flames a power play at 6:17 of the second period, and they scored at 9:02, with winger Brian MacLellan taking a pass from Loob and shooting it from the left side past Hrudey as the Kings’ goalie slid to cover the left corner of the net.

Before the second period ended, though, Wiemer came through, once again, slapping a 70-foot shot from the right side that hopped off the stick of Flame defenseman Rob Ramage and flew at Vernon on the glove side. Vernon got his glove on the shot, but not square enough to stop it.

That was with almost five minutes left in the second period. The Kings had the lead and they sat on it, failing to take another shot in the period.

Then, they followed that up by taking only five shots in the third period.

Meanwhile, the Flames were still playing offensive hockey, taking 13 shots in the period and keeping the puck in the Kings’ zone. Their effort finally paid off when a lucky bounce--in the Kings’ zone--gave them the tying goal with just 1:36 left in regulation.

A puck that was rolling around the ledge on the boards behind the King net--rimming around on a hard shot that Duchesne was expecting would drop down outside the right faceoff circle--glanced off one of the metal dividers in the glass and caromed straight down, landing just to the right of the goal. It fell straight down and stopped. Hrudey scrambled to cover the right corner, but Flame winger Gary Roberts was a touch faster, pouncing on the puck for the quick scoring--and tying--shot.

“The glass in this building is such that it sits about three inches behind the boards,” said Gretzky, who grew very familiar with the building during his days with Edmonton. “It can sit on the shelf and go all the way around. Our defenseman played the shot right, but it hit on of the bars and bounced right to them . . .

“That’s hockey.”

That goal was about as fluky as they come. Certainly not the fault of Hrudey.

And the goal in overtime, although not really a fluke goal, certainly wasn’t run-of-the-mill.

McSorley had picked up the puck in front of the Kings’ net and was winding up to knock it out of the way, to center ice, when Gilmour tugged at his elbow. McSorley got a piece of the puck, enough to scoot it along, but not enough to really clear it. It went, slowly, to Dana Murzyn. And then like lightening back to Gilmour.

“It was a weird play,” McSorley said. “It was a high-risk play at a bad time. They had a lot of guys in forechecking and I got a hook from behind and lost control of the puck.”

Gilmour, who at some point in the overtime caught a stick under his right eye and suffered a gash that was held together by butterfly bandages afterward, was not glorifying his role in the victory. In fact, he was almost shrugging it off, claiming to have been in the right place at the right time when Murzyn sent the pass toward the goal.

Gilmour said that he didn’t think either team played too well.

“I think we were just feeling each other out tonight,” he said. “The last five minutes of the game, they shut us down. We tied it on a lucky bounce.”

But the lucky bounce turns the game around only if the Kings--the highest-scoring team in the league during the regular season--are trying to win by one goal.

Nicholls seemed to be echoing the opinion of others in the locker room when he said: “We’re not a defensive team. We can’t sit back and let them come at us and let Kelly do all the work.

“The problem is that no one wants to make the mistake and get caught back so that they have an outnumbered attack.

“It’s all mental. You start to play cautious, play defensively. What we have to do is have someone in their face all night.”

Instead of complaining about the play of his teammates, Hrudey listened to a summation of the problem and responded: “Well, if we’ve identified the problem, then it’s easy to rectify. We have to go at them a little harder. We now know that we can’t sit back on our heels.

“If we’re not committed to forechecking, things don’t go well for us. We know that. We’ve already talked about it.”

In keeping with the forward-looking stance, Gretzky said: “We know the predicament we’re in now. We just have to forget about this one and think about winning on Thursday.”