Youth Serves Kings Pretty Well, but ‘Time Bomb’ Costly in Loss : Hockey: Sydor’s clearing pass fails to leave zone and leads to winning goal in 4-2 loss to Devils.

King defenseman Darryl Sydor continues to confound his new coach, Larry Robinson, who called him a “time bomb.”

It was Sydor, not one of the three inexperienced defensemen, who made the telling miscue on the game-winning goal in the third period as the Stanley Cup champion New Jersey Devils went on to beat the Kings, 4-2, Saturday night at the Forum before an announced crowd of 15,540.

Rob Cowie and rookie defensemen Sean O’Donnell and Aki Berg managed to stay even with the Devils until the final minutes. But a clearing attempt by Sydor gave the Devils possession. Veteran center Neal Broten then finished off the play, beating King goaltender Byron Dafoe with a wraparound with 6:07 remaining to break a 2-2 tie.

“It’s my fault--that’s the bottom line,” Sydor said. “I cost the team the win. I just mishandled it and lost the puck. All year, I’ve been making . . . plays.”

Said Robinson, shaking his head: “At times he looks like an all-star and at other times he’s like a time bomb waiting to explode. His biggest problem is Darryl. He’s getting down, he’s getting so nervous, so afraid he’s going to make the wrong play.

“It’s like a time bomb. You know it’s ticking and you don’t know when it’s going to go off.”

And it’s not as though the Kings can afford to limit Sydor’s playing time. Four defensemen are injured and another, Denis Tsygurov, went down with a rib cage contusion after playing only two shifts in the first period.

Meanwhile, the Kings have won only once in their last six games. But they had an opportunity to tie it when defenseman Jason Smith went off at 17:57 for holding Tony Granato. They then had a six-on-four advantage when Dafoe was pulled for an extra attacker, but Devil defenseman Scott Stevens scored on an empty-netter from his own zone to make it 4-2.

It spoiled Robinson’s first game against his former team, the Devils, with whom he was an assistant for two seasons. On Thursday, he received his Stanley Cup ring from the Devils.

“We didn’t get a chance to speak today,” New Jersey Coach Jacques Lemaire said. “He has his problems, and we have ours.”

Despite the injury problems, the Kings got another strong effort from Dafoe and rookie right wing Vitali Yachmenev, who scored and added an assist and played a poised game at the point on the power play. Left wing Dimitri Khristich added two assists.

King center Yanic Perreault had tied the score, 2-2, with a power-play goal at 9:46 of the third period for his eighth goal of the season. All of the earlier scoring came in the first period with the Devils taking a 2-1 lead on goals by enforcer Mike Peluso at 3:31 and Broten on the power play at 10:57. Yachmenev, the NHL’s rookie of the month in October, scored his seventh goal of the season at 8:33.

The Kings played most of the game with only five defensemen after Tsygurov’s injury. These days, the Kings are being hit with a series of strained lower backs. Forward John Druce has missed three consecutive games because of that injury, and a precautionary MRI on Friday was negative. And defenseman Michel Petit missed Saturday night’s game because of the same injury.

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King Notes

There is an increasing likelihood that defenseman Rob Blake will require season-ending knee surgery, but the team and Blake will try one more three-week stretch of rest before making a final decision. Blake skated for “about a minute” on Friday and felt little stability in the left knee, in which he suffered a partially torn anterior cruciate ligament on Oct. 20. “It’s always in the back of your mind,” Blake said of surgery. “But I want to try to rehab it in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, I can avoid it [surgery] because that would be the season. Playing 25 games in two years isn’t good for a career.” The loss of Blake, whether it is temporary or not, means that King General Manager Sam McMaster will intensify his search for a top defenseman this week at the general managers meetings in New York. “They’re really hard to find, every team is looking for them,” McMaster said. “Hopefully, he’ll be like 50% of the players and he’ll be back playing.”