With Pressure On, Kings Have Been Turning Off : Hockey: Flames are at the Forum to face a team on a weeklong series of lost opportunities.

Which one will it be? Which group of Kings will show up at the Forum for today’s 1 p.m. game against the Calgary Flames--the club that snatched a victory from the hottest team in hockey a week ago, or the one that has handed away chances against two of the league’s worst teams since.

Trailing the Flames, 3-2, in the final period, the Kings rallied to win, 4-3, last Saturday to take a two-point lead in the Smythe Division. But a loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday and a tie against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday knocked the Kings out of the division lead for the first time since Jan. 9.

Now comes Kings-Flames Showdown II, the Rematch.

Calgary has a one-point division lead. Both clubs have five games left. Both have three home games remaining. Both have a home-and-home series left against the Edmonton Oilers.

And if the division title should still be up in the air next Sunday on the last day of the regular season, it would be decided in Kings-Flames Showdown III, to be played at Calgary’s Saddledome.

Two considerations have to be particularly unsettling to the Kings as they skate toward the finish line:

--Their handling of the puck.

--Their handling of the pressure.

Between them, the Canucks and Maple Leafs scored nine goals against the Kings. The last eight came on turnovers.

Even more disturbing was the mention by several Kings of a lack of “intensity” Wednesday night.

If not now, when?

“We suffered a little bit of a letdown after the Calgary game,” Wayne Gretzky said. “And there’s no question we were looking to (today) when we played Toronto. They came in here with no pressure. If they won, they won. If they lost, they lost. And they played that way.

“But we can’t be down or disappointed. I don’t know of anybody who didn’t care or didn’t play his heart out.”

The Kings have enjoyed one of their best seasons. If they win today, they would tie the team record for victories at 43. If they win two of their remaining three home games, they would tie the club record for Forum victories at 25.

Yet, they have been unable to shake Calgary. Taking advantage of a schedule that gave them 17 of their final 23 games at home, the Flames have gone 16-3-2 in their last 21.

“I don’t think I’ve ever gone through a 30-game stretch like this,” Gretzky said. “Every game since Feb. 1 has been like a playoff game. When we get up every morning, the first thing we do is look in the paper to see what happened to Calgary.”

That won’t be necessary today. The Flames will be on the Forum ice.

So will the Kings, one way or the other.