Schedule, Colorado Take Toll on Kings

King goaltender Stephane Fiset has played some of his best games against his former Colorado teammates, but he would have had to have been Superman to stop the Avalanche on Tuesday night.

Colorado took advantage of a weary King team with a four-goal second-period onslaught and skated away with a 5-1 victory to end the Kings’ three-game winning streak before 16,061 at McNichols Arena.

The Avalanche, which had not played since Friday, was clearly ready for the Kings, who were playing the last game of a three-game trip and the second of back-to-back games.

“It’s about time that they won a game against us,” said Fiset, who made 36 saves as the Kings dropped back to .500 at 15-15-6. “We’re not supposed to win a game against them [according to hockey experts]. I guess they were due to beat us.”

Dating to last season, the Kings had won three in a row against their Pacific Division rival, but Colorado came out Tuesday determined to show who ruled the division. With the game not 3 1/2 minutes old, former King Jari Kurri scored his 600th career goal. Demonstrating its firepower, the Avalanche outshot the Kings, 41-20, in extending its home winning streak to six games and lead over the second-place Kings to 13 points.

Colorado goaltender Patrick Roy stopped 19 shots in his second start since missing four games because of an abdominal injury, and the Avalanche wore down the Kings behind Peter Forsberg and Claude Lemieux, who each had a goal and an assist, and Valeri Kamensky, who had three assists.

“It was a tough one for L.A. [because] it was their third game in four nights and we were very well-rested,” Colorado’s Adam Deadmarsh said. “We have not played in four days. It was a good game for us, we obviously wanted to go into the Christmas break with a win.”

The Kings, who defeated Chicago, 1-0, behind 32 saves by Jamie Storr on Monday, played Colorado even for the first period.

After Kurri’s milestone marker put the Avalanche ahead, 1-0, at 3:21, the Kings responded with aggressive forechecking and tied the score five minutes later. Rob Blake, who was in the lineup after sitting out most of Monday’s game at Chicago with a buttocks injury, scored his third power-play goal in four games at 8:25.

The rest of the period, Fiset and Roy exchanged solid saves to keep the score tied, with Colorado holding a 13-6 advantage in shots.

“They don’t pass any chance to shoot the puck,” Fiset said of the Avalanche. “They shoot from everywhere . . . from the blue line, from the corner, from the slot; they shoot from all over.”

The Avalanche, which has lost only two games at home all season, took control in the second period.

Forward Eric Lacroix knocked in a rebound 59 seconds in. Ten seconds later, Forsberg scored his 15th goal of the season, thanks to a great assist by Kamensky, to make the score 3-1.

Colorado the capitalized on a double-minor high-sticking penalty on the Kings’ Sandy Moger.

Lemieux scored at 9:57 from another assist by Kamensky, and Uwe Krupp finished the scoring with a blast from the point at 11:50.

“We’re taking way too many penalties, that’s the bottom line,” King Coach Larry Robinson said of his team, which entered the game with the second-highest penalties-per-game average in the NHL.

“We gave it our all. With very little we had, we gave everything that we had. I guess we can’t expect these guys to be miracle workers going up against a team that has been sitting here resting. That’s not the ideal situation.”

For the Kings, who do not play again until Saturday when they host Phoenix at the Forum, they gladly will take a 2-1 trip and a .500 record into the Christmas break.

“We wanted to have a successful trip,” defenseman Gary Galley said. “Are we happy with the way things went tonight? No we are not. In the first period, we tried real hard to stay physical, but in the second period . . . we started to [tire] and mentally we started to make mistakes.

“[The good thing] was that the guys stayed with it and we didn’t go out in the third and fold. That’s what you have to do to build character. That’s was a pretty good team we played tonight.”