Kings Get Victory at Calgary, 8-6

After blowing another lead, after battling back and then, finally, holding on for an 8-6 victory over Calgary Tuesday night, the Kings could only breathe a sigh of relief.

Good, bad, even ugly. Whatever. They needed a victory over the Flames. Here or there. Didn’t matter.

“After losing 10 straight, we were just saying to ourselves, we’ve got to start beating this team,” said Marty McSorley, who was playing right wing when he scored the goal that gave the Kings the upper hand to start the third period at the Olympic Saddledome.

“They won the Stanley Cup. They won our division. This is the team we have to beat. We have to beat them during the regular season if we want to have a chance to beat them in the playoffs. We have to believe that we can beat them. At 10 straight, we knew we had to start beating this team now.”

The 10 straight included:

--Two games earlier this season.

--Calgary’s sweep of four playoff games last spring.

--Calgary’s four victories over the Kings toward the end of last season.

It starts to get a little humiliating.

But one big victory works wonders for the ol’ ego.

Calgary is still leading the Smythe Division with a record of 10-7-4. But the Kings are starting their comeback in the standings, too, moving into a tie for second place with a record of 9-10-0.

Wayne Gretzky, who had four assists, was left to analyze just how fast the Kings are closing in on his archrivals of today and yesterday. Just three games’ difference in the loss column. That’s not much to make up. And, as Gretzky pointed out, “We feel we’ve got a pretty good team here.”

Yes, the Kings are starting to feel like themselves again after back-to-back victories over Montreal and Calgary.

Mario Gosselin has been in goal for both of the victories, getting the nod ahead of goalie Kelly Hrudey.

Coach Tom Webster said he had chosen Gosselin, on both occasions, because of his records with those teams.

“I checked his record against Montreal and I checked his record here in Calgary,” Webster said. “he’s lost some games here, but he’s played well. In the last two games, he’s come up with a couple of good wins for us.”

In both of those “good wins,” the Kings blew 4-1 leads in the second period. Saturday night, after letting Montreal come back to tie, 4-4, the Kings pulled out a 5-4 victory.

Tuesday, the Flames scored four in a row to take a 5-4 lead, but the Kings came back with three in a row.

It didn’t work that way last Wednesday. In that game at the Forum, the Kings also blew a 4-1 second-period lead, but lost, 5-4, to Calgary.

Asked if he had been afraid the 4-1 scenario would play out the same way it had the last time against the Flames, Webster said: “I wasn’t going to let it happen. I wasn’t going to allow it.”

The coach also said that it was his job to keep the team in the game and the players focused. And he managed it, although there were a couple of lapses, such as when Ken Baumgartner took a two-minute penalty for elbowing that led directly to a Flames’ power-play goal.

For the most part, the Kings were on top of their game, forcing the play. It was Webster’s plan to set the aggressive offensive pace. In the long run, it worked.

The Kings will take on all comers in a shootout.

As McSorley said: “You can’t say we’re not an exciting team.”

Only 3 minutes 40 seconds into the game, Calgary’s Doug Gilmour beat Gosselin on a breakaway. But the Kings came back to score four in a row--by Bernie Nicholls on a rebound to tie it at 6:08, by Mike Allison on a deflection at 9:57, by Steve Kasper off a rebound from the boards at 19:00 and by John Tonelli, a power play goal on a net left wide open while goalie Rick Wamsley went to try to gather in a puck.

Sure enough, in the second period the Flames came back. They scored four straight to regain the lead at 10:05 of the second. Gary Suter started the comeback with a shot high over Gosselin’s glove at 4:38. Sergei Makarov poked the rebound of a shot by Gary Roberts into the right corner of the net 1 minute 21 seconds later. And less than two minutes after that, Joe Nieuwendyk tied the game, standing in front of Gosselin to receive the pass from Suter on the power play. Theoren Fleury gave the Flames the lead, then, after taking the centering pass from Makarov on the power play.

The next goal--the one by Luc Robitaille less than a minute later that tied the game at 5-5--was the goal that did in Wamsley. He was pulled in favor of Mike Vernon at 10:51 of the second period.

McSorley saw his chance to jump on a loose puck early in the third period and he and took it to give the Kings a 6-5 lead. Larry Robinson’s second goal of the season gave the Kings a 7-5 lead after Robinson passed to Gretzky in the left corner, took it back from Gretzky and put it past Vernon.

Calgary Coach Terry Crisp pulled Vernon at 18:47 and the Flames got a six-on-five goal from Joey Mullen at 19:01.

But Kasper scored on the Flames’ empty net at 19:17 to put the game away.

King Notes

The Kings had not won at the Saddledome since April of 1988. They lost all four regular-season games at the Saddledome last season and then lost two playoff games here. . . . Calgary’s loss to the Kings Tuesday night was their third straight. Calgary did not lose three straight games all last season. . . . Defenseman Petr Prajsler got tangled up with Calgary’s Joel Otto and went down in a heap during the first period, suffering a sprained left knee. He was sent home to Los Angeles to see doctors. . . . Keith Crowder played at Calgary Tuesday night after missing 10 games with a cervical strain. . . . Brian Benning made his first appearance in a King uniform.