Kings Are Losing the Race : Hockey: They fall seven points behind final playoff spot after 4-3 loss to Sharks. The go-ahead goal comes with 0.4 seconds left in second period.

OK, so Marty McSorley wasn’t the instant solution. Anybody got a better idea?

The Kings are running out of ideas.

And time.

And their confidence isn’t exactly in large supply either after they dropped a 4-3 decision to the San Jose Sharks Saturday night before a sellout crowd of 17,190 at San Jose Arena.

It was a crucial showdown against a team that has been in existence only three years and the Kings couldn’t pull out a victory.

They had a chance. Just before the final second ticked off, defenseman Darryl Sydor took one last shot from the left circle, but it was stopped by goaltender Arturs Irbe, stretched out in a prone position, as the green light came on, signaling the end for the Kings.

The loss drops them seven points behind the Sharks, holders of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, with 26 games to play.

The Kings are 21-31-6, San Jose 22-26-11.

It was hoped that the trade that brought McSorley to the Kings last week would provide the spark to turn things around.

Instead, the Kings find themselves 0-2 in the McSorley II era and losers of four in a row overall.

“There are no easy answers,” King Coach Barry Melrose said, “no gimmicks, no trick plays, no magic answer.”

It was the biggest game in the brief history of the Sharks, who haven’t previously been this high in the standings this late in the season.

Coming into a sold-out hostile arena with so much on the line, the Kings needed to score first and fast to deflate the mood.

And score they did 2:18 into the game on a shorthanded goal after Pat Conacher stole the puck and fed Mike Donnelly on a breakaway.

Donnelly skated down the slot and smashed the puck over Irbe’s left shoulder for Donnelly’s 16th goal.

But as was the case 24 hours earlier, the Kings soon lost the lead and the momentum.

Friday night against the Philadelphia Flyers, the Kings scored 27 seconds into the game, only to end up losing, 4-3.

Saturday night, the Sharks tied the score just under two minutes after Donnelly’s goal. Wayne Gretzky turned the puck over around his own blue line, Igor Larionov feeding fellow Russian Sergei Makarov, who scored his 18th goal on a breakaway, backhanding the puck past goalie Kelly Hrudey.

Luc Robitaille got his-team high 32nd goal when Sydor’s shot caromed into the net off Robitaille’s leg. But the Sharks’ Jamie Baker evened the score, 2-2, with his sixth goal before the period was over.

San Jose defenseman Jayson More scored his first goal of the season in the second period, but that was countered by a classic Gretzky-to-Jari Kurri two-on-one rush, the kind they have been pulling off since they both called Edmonton home. Kurri put this one in shorthanded for his 26th goal, tying the score with only 20 seconds remaining in the period.

That proved to be four-tenths of a second too much.

With only that fraction of time remaining on the clock, the Sharks, still on the power play, found wing Johan Garpenlov all along in the right circle. Garpenlov buried his 13th goal between Hrudey’s pads and it was 4-3 San Jose.

If the Kings hold on for four-tenths of a second, the game probably goes into overtime.

But then, it has been that kind of a season. And it’s only getting later, not better.

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King Notes

Nicolas Vachon, son of King executive and former goaltender Rogie Vachon, is leading the minor league Knoxville Broncos in scoring in his first season of professional hockey. Vachon has 72 points in 50 games, including 25 goals, along with 117 penalty minutes. . . . The Kings didn’t waste much time giving away Tomas Sandstrom’s number. Defenseman Jim Paek now wears No. 7.