Outlook Changes for Kings : Hockey: After upset loss in Game 1, they will try to put pressure on Canuck scorers tonight.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Certainly not so soon. Certainly not against the Vancouver Canucks.

One minute, the Kings are reveling in their new role as division champions, looking ahead to a possible Stanley Cup. The next, they are reeling from a stunning 6-5 opening-game loss.

Having collapsed against the Canucks Thursday night at the Forum in Game 1 of their best-of-seven, first-round series, the Kings find themselves already needing a victory in Game 2 at 7:30 tonight on their home ice against a team they outfinished by 37 points during the regular season.

But the feeling at practice Friday was more of resolve than remorse.

“Nobody ever won a Stanley Cup by winning one game,” Wayne Gretzky said. “And nobody ever lost a Stanley Cup by losing one game.”

True enough, but it wasn’t just that the Kings lost. It was how they lost.

Ahead 5-3 going into the final period, the Kings played the kind of team defense they were once known for: Little if any.

“The team defense was as bad as it was two years ago,” Gretzky conceded. “We totally threw everything out the window we worked for all year. We got into a shootout. You can’t do that in the playoffs and get to the Stanley Cup.”

No argument from defenseman Larry Robinson.

“We cannot give them so much ice,” Robinson said. “We gave them too much room to maneuver. If you had put a dozen eggs in our pocket, not one of them would have been broken. There was no physical presence out there.”

Vancouver wing Geoff Courtnall was free to tee off on goalie Kelly Hrudey from his favorite spot in the left circle, rifling his bullet shot without a King defender within reach.

Courtnall made the most of it, getting a hat trick along with an assist on Cliff Ronning’s winning goal.

It’s not as if the Kings didn’t have warning. Courtnall beat them in overtime of the last regular-season meeting between the clubs with a shot from the left circle.

Courtnall and Ronning have breathed new life into the Canucks since their arrival from the St. Louis Blues in a March trade. The two have formed a line with Trevor Linden that has spearheaded their team’s surge into the playoffs.

This line had combined for 35 points since March 5. Thursday night alone, it had nine points.

“Courtnall has the speed,” Gretzky said, “Ronning is a good playmaker, and Linden takes the body. They have the ingredients of a very good line.”

How to neutralize it?

“It’s a challenge to the people who are doing the checking,” said Rick Wilson, the Kings’ assistant coach who will share the coaching chores with Cap Raeder tonight while Coach Tom Webster serves the last game of his four-game suspension. “Maybe we didn’t realize the offensive job they can do, but we realize it now. You’ve got to check them quicker, get on them sooner and get into their face. With more body contact, you force them to start and stop, start and stop. That keeps them out of sync.”

It’s the kind of thing the Kings did most of the season while giving up 83 fewer goals than they did the season before.

But not Thursday night.

“We did all the things that we didn’t do all year,” Robinson said, “not covering the late man, not covering guys in front of the net. And you don’t win hockey games that way.

“It you have to lose, it’s better to lose the first one than the last one. But we have to learn from our mistakes. God knows, we made enough of them. We just put our skates on, took our sticks out onto the ice and expected it to happen. It didn’t.”

Said Canuck goalie Troy Gamble, who got the victory in his first playoff game: “We’re not the Kings. We know that. For us, it’s like fighting Mike Tyson or something. You look out there and see Wayne Gretzky and then look at our guys, and it looks like we’re outclassed.”

That’s what a lot of people thought of not only the Canucks, but several other heavy underdogs over a two-night period that saw six of eight visiting teams open the playoffs with victories.

“They’re expected to lose,” Robinson said of the Canucks. “It’s a heck of a position to be in.”

Heading into tonight, everybody seems to have an idea of what strategy the Kings should employ to turn this series around, but Wilson cautioned that this is not a chess match.

“It’s only one game,” he said. “It can be dangerous to analyze this to death.”

Robinson, too, says that analysis can only go so far. Then, execution has to take over.

“You can look at a blackboard until you are blue in the face,” he said, “but you can’t take the blackboard out onto the ice.”

One change the Kings definitely won’t make is in the net. Hrudey, certainly not to blame for the defensive breakdown, will remain the starter.

“No disrespect intended,” Hrudey said, “but let’s not worry about the Canucks. All we’ve been hearing about is how they’ve changed. Maybe we’re too hung up on that.

“We can beat ourselves to death or we can go on from there. This is the playoffs. It’s no time to live in regret, to live in the past. We’ve got to look ahead.”