Long Ottawa Goal Haunts Dafoe After 5-4 King Loss

Byron Dafoe’s ride as the Kings’ starting goaltender turned nightmarish with a single, improbable shot Thursday night. Ottawa defenseman Sean Hill launched a 120-foot prayer from his own blue line and the puck skipped once, wobbled and ultimately eluded Dafoe, beating him stick side with 3:21 remaining.

Worse yet for Dafoe, the goal decided the game, finishing a three-goal, third-period flurry to give the Senators a come-from-behind 5-4 victory over the Kings before a sellout crowd of 10,575 at the Civic Centre.

“The joke is I can hit it from there, but I can’t hit it from the top of the circle,” said Hill, who scored a similar goal earlier this season against Tampa Bay.

Said Dafoe: “I went to play it with my stick side and it was coming at my body and it went to the right corner. “Bad goal, bad timing. There are highs and lows, and this is definitely a low. It’ll be a sleepless night tonight and back to work tomorrow.”

Yet Hill’s goal wasn’t the odd sight. Wayne Gretzky, upset by an earlier third-period hit by Hill that knocked the wind out of him, actually tried to punch Hill and received a 10-minute misconduct in a multi-player skirmish with 10 seconds left. Did he hit him? “I don’t know,” Gretzky said, giggling and shaking his head. Hill wasn’t sure either, saying: “Not that I know of. I had guys grabbing me all over. Obviously, he was frustrated; I don’t blame him.”

Gretzky wasn’t alone in his frustration after the Kings (4-2-3) lost their second consecutive game after an unbeaten streak of seven. King Coach Larry Robinson lashed out at the shoddy work ethic of some of his players and was particularly upset by Thursday’s officiating, pleading for consistency. Earlier this week, Gretzky said the league was in “chaos” and “disarray” in enforcing the crackdown on interference and obstruction.

“It’s not frustrating if you call the game the way it’s supposed to be called,” Robinson said. “Some consistency, that’s all we’re asking. They let a hooking penalty go and then they give us two penalties; to me that’s not consistency.

“It’s not the reason we lost the game. But that’s all we’re asking--call the game.”

Robinson spoke about the Hill hit, saying: “It’s called a pick. Gretz isn’t looking and some guy knocked him down.”

He also felt the Senators were not called for getting their sticks in a couple of King players’ faces and then King right wing Rick Tocchet was given a five-minute major for butt-ending Stanislav Neckar with 45 seconds remaining.

Meanwhile, Robinson vowed to get tough with his players, planning to end the practice of voluntary game-day skates. “I should have seen this coming after the practice we had [Wednesday],” he said. “The guys, not all of them, were going through the motions. I’m trying to be fair, but it’s going to work both ways.”

The Kings had established a 4-2 lead heading into the third period with Tocchet scoring his sixth and seventh goals of the season and Yanic Perreault adding three assists and Vitali Yachmenev two. But the Senators (5-3) scored two power-play goals in the third to tie it 4-4 before Hill’s shocker.

Ottawa, winners of three consecutive games and five of its last six, simply started out-hitting the Kings in the final 20 minutes and seemed to win most of the one-on-one battles to the puck.

“When our two best scorers are having to do the battles, there’s something wrong,” Robinson said. “We need other guys with bigger bodies to use them. We’re getting out-hit in all areas of the ice.”

King Notes

Left wing Eric Lacroix was the only healthy scratch. Lacroix said it was the first time he had been benched by a coach since beginning organized hockey.