Rats! Robinson Cheesed Off After Kings Lose Again

King Coach Larry Robinson’s extermination service rolled into Miami Arena on Sunday night and by the second period the job was almost completed.

The Panthers had scored so many goals that the sellout crowd of 14,703 nearly ran out of those cute rubber rats to throw on the ice as Florida defeated the Kings, 5-1.

Right wing Scott Mellanby, who spawned the tradition when he killed a real rat in the dressing room, scored the first goal at 15:56 of the first period and about 50 rats hit the ice and 15 arena workers scurried out to take them off. By the time Jody Hull scored on a breakaway after a Darryl Sydor turnover with one-tenth of a second remaining in the second period for the Panthers’ fifth goal, the rat deluge turned into a trickle.

Now, the next thing Robinson might want to do is eradicate some players.

After the Kings (10-9-5) lost their fourth consecutive game, Robinson hinted at some potential sweeping moves when asked how much longer he could stay with these players.

“Not much longer,” Robinson said. “What do you do? You can’t trade 14 guys. We certainly have to find some answers and find them quick.

“Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree. Maybe we don’t have the personnel to do it. But if that was the case, why did we go unbeaten the first seven games?”

He was especially displeased the team abandoned his game plan after trailing, 2-0, after the first period. Center Stu Barnes made it 2-0 with seven-tenths of a second remaining after defenseman Robert Svehla picked off an attempted clearing pass by King forward Tony Granato.

“I didn’t get enough wood on it, I’ll take responsibility for that mistake,” Granato said.

Said Robinson: “If they have any pride at all in themselves, they’ll take a long look in the mirror. We went over exactly the way we wanted to do it. We made two big mistakes in the first period that cost us two goals.

“Now all of a sudden, everyone wants to do it their own way. Defensemen carrying the puck. Guys leaving the zone before we have possession of the puck. If they want to play their own way, the results we got tonight are exactly the results we’re going to get.

“Because they’re the same results we’ve had in the past. We had that all settled before the season started. Now you have a little bit of adversity and now they want to go back to doing it their own way.”

The lone offensive King highlight was defenseman Steven Finn scoring his first goal of the season, at 4:14 of the second. But the momentum rapidly fizzled as the Panthers scored two goals in a span of 1:28 to take a 4-1 lead.

After the fourth goal, by Rob Niedermayer on the power play at 9:14, Robinson pulled starter Byron Dafoe and replaced him with Kelly Hrudey. Dafoe gave up four goals on 19 shots. Hrudey gave up one goal and faced 17 shots.

It was the first time Dafoe has been pulled all season, but Robinson said he merely did it to try to jump-start the team. “[Robinson’s words] made me feel better,” Dafoe said. “It’s been 19 games, it’s got to happen sooner or later.”

Robinson is quickly running out of ideas. He yelled at his players after a lackluster first period in Boston. Then the Kings came out and mustered only four shots on goal in the first period against the Panthers. In this four-game trip, the Kings have had five shots or fewer in five periods.

“I think I’m going to hang up a big mirror and have everybody look at it when they come in,” he said. “If they feel they’re doing all they can do for this club and they’re playing as well as they can play, we’re just going to have to look elsewhere and get somebody else to do the job.”

The last time the Kings lost four consecutive games was last season when they dropped six in a row from April 7-19. Meanwhile, on this trip, Wayne Gretzky has gone pointless in three of the four games.

“When this club starts to struggle, don’t look at 99 all the time,” Robinson said. “He’s been pulling the wagon here for about seven years. It’s about time for somebody else to step up. There’s a lot of guys here making a lot of money that have to have more pride than that.”