Escaping Fog, Kings Get 6-5 Win at Buffalo

The Kings arrived here Tuesday in a dense fog.

How fitting.

Since the first of the year, this has been a team playing in a fog, stumbling through one loss after another, all the way to fourth in the Smythe Division.

But by Wednesday, the fog in Buffalo lifted, as it has, it seems, from the Kings.

The team’s 6-5 overtime victory Wednesday night over the Buffalo Sabres before a Memorial Auditorium crowd of 16,433 was the club’s third in a row after a four-game losing streak.

This is still a team going nowhere in the division at 31-34-6. But suddenly, there is a feeling their prospects for going somewhere in the playoffs are at least brighter.

“We are just sticking to our game plan,” Coach Tom Webster said, “and just maybe, you can see something unfolding.”

It’s not just the victories that breed this optimism, although the last two have come on the road, against the New York Rangers and the Sabres, two of the top teams in the Wales Conference.

It’s the way the Kings are winning. Wayne Gretzky seems to be over the malaise that gripped him during much of the team’s slump. Tomas Sandstrom and Tony Granato, obtained in the Bernie Nicholls trade with the Rangers Jan. 20, are both healthy for the first time. The Kings’ power play is working again, with seven power-play goals in three games, including three Wednesday.

And Kelly Hrudey is back.

It was a most unlikely time for the King goalie to play his first full game since Feb. 24.

The temperature soared to 78 degrees Wednesday in Buffalo, a city record for this date.

By night, the humidity hung in Memorial Auditorium like the banners on the ceiling.

Add to that mushy ice that was causing the puck to fly in odd directions, and an overtime game and you have miserable conditions for the healthiest of goalies.

One recovering from mononucleosis, as is Hrudey?

Forget it.

Yet when Bob Kudelski flipped in the winning goal at the 1:25 mark of overtime, Hrudey was still out there, having faced 32 shots.

“I almost pulled him at the end of the second period,” Webster said. “But he was determined to stay in there.”

Hrudey admitted his legs were shaky in the second period.

“But, I felt pretty good by the third period,” he said. “I seemed to get a second wind.

“I still don’t feel anything like I did when I was healthy, but I went two months without saying anything (about the mononucleosis), so I think I can play now.”

While Hrudey was able to shake off the weariness in his legs, he could only shake his head at some of the goals scored Wednesday.

The first four were normal, normal being the puck going off the stick of a member of the scoring team into the net.

The Kings got three of those in the first period, thanks to Mike Krushelnyski (his 14th goal), Dave Taylor (14th) and Granato (10th). The Sabres’ first goal was scored by Ken Priestlay (fifth).

Then the weird stuff began.

Buffalo closed the margin to 3-2, Dave Andreychuk scoring his 32nd goal after the puck bounced off the skates of King defensemen Tom Laidlaw and Tim Watters.

Strange? It got stranger.

The puck wound up behind the Buffalo net nearly six minutes into the second period, so Sabre defenseman Mike Ramsey, sandwiched by Granato and Sandstrom, shoved it out with his free hand in the direction of goalie Daren Puppa.

Puppa stood there watching helplessly as the puck came his way, bounced off his skate and tumbled into the net to give the Kings a 4-2 lead.

The goal went to Gretzky, who was standing there watching along with Puppa, because he was the last King to get a stick on the puck.

“I had four other chances to score and I didn’t,” Gretzky said. “Then I get that stupid goal. But they all count.”

So did the goal that tied the score after Andreychuk’s second of the night brought his team closer at 4-3.

Mike Donnelly got the fourth Buffalo goal, although he was among the last to know. That’s because he had his back turned at the time.

Facing the net while he wrestled with the Kings’ Marty McSorley, Donnelly never saw Doug Bodger’s shot that bounced off Donnelly’s back and went into the net at the 9:38 mark of the second period.

Bodger scored the next goal himself, but not without the aid of another innocent target. His 12th goal, scored at the 3:05 mark of the final period, caromed off McSorley’s stick before going through Hrudey’s legs.

McSorley’s 12th goal, a career high, tied the score at the 10:21 mark. He was in there in place of Steve Duchesne, who left the game in the first period with a sore neck and blurred vision after being smacked into the boards.

When Phil Housley and Bodger were unable to control the puck in their own zone in the overtime, Krushelnyski raced in and fired it. Puppa made the block, but fell down. The puck landed in front of him.

The goalie on his side and the puck in the crease. How could the onrushing Kudelski miss?

He didn’t.