Kings Go to the Trouble of Beating San Jose, 4-1

The Kings probably cost themselves a position in the upcoming draft by defeating the San Jose Sharks, 4-1, Saturday at the Forum, and it should come as no surprise.

After all, the Kings have done nothing easy all season, so why should they start now? In front of 15,764, goaltender Jamie Storr won his first game of the season and the Kings used two goals by defenseman Philippe Boucher to move three points ahead of the last-place Sharks in the Western Conference.

Just the way King Coach Larry Robinson wanted it.

“I feel lucky,” he said about the team’s chances of landing the first pick in the June 21 draft. “As unlucky as our season has been, we’ll wind up winning the lotto.”

With only tonight’s game at Colorado left, the Kings will miss the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year. But at least they are not ending the season with a whimper, and they put an end to their seven-game losing streak to boot.

Dimitri Khristich, selected by the local media as the team’s most valuable player, scored a goal and Kai Nurminen added another as the Kings won their final home game for the third consecutive season, and finished with an 18-16-7 record at the Forum.

As expected, the battle between two of the NHL’s worst teams was not a thing of beauty. Fights were rampant and defense was scarce.

“Playing for nothing, like we were, and obviously, Los Angeles doing the same thing, made for probably the worst game from a spectator’s viewpoint,” San Jose Coach Al Sims said.

The Kings’ Steve McKenna, a 6-foot-8 emerging crowd favorite, fought former King enforcer Marty McSorley twice and they came close to a third encounter.

“He hit me a couple of times and made me wonder what I was doing out there,” said McKenna, who more than held his own against McSorley.

McKenna’s combativeness has not gone unnoticed by Robinson.

“I’ve liked what I’ve seen from the start,” he said of McKenna, who was recalled from the minors last month. “I thought that he did well. He has really improved a lot.”