One Big Burst Not Enough for Kings

The first period of the Kings’ 4-3 loss to Detroit was history, kind of like a reprise of the Saturday Night Massacre, and Dave Taylor was busily trying to keep from answering questions about the vocational future of Larry Robinson.

“He’s the coach now,” said Taylor, the Kings’ vice president and general manager. And for how long?

“He’s the coach right now,” Taylor repeated, and you considered the qualifier in light of the Kings’ recent play, which included a four-game losing streak coming into Saturday night, a miserable first 20 minutes and a 3-0 Red Wing lead.

“What we have to do is win one period at a time,” Taylor said, “and I think that’s what he’s telling them right now.”

If that was the message, it was received because the Kings came back in a way they hadn’t all season, getting goals from Yanic Perreault, Luc Robitaille and Sean O’Donnell and leaving the ice with a little bounce in their stride and a 3-3 tie and sudden fan favor.

That was quickly curtailed when Tomas Holmstrom took a pass from Doug Brown and scored the game-winner for the Red Wings, 2:23 into the third.

All of that had followed one of worst first periods of a season of bad periods for the Kings. After giving up Detroit’s first short-handed goal of the season, they surrendered goals by Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan only 23 seconds apart that gave the Red Wings a 3-0 lead in the first period.

Worse, the Kings had spent six minutes on the power play, with nothing to show for it. Worse still, they had a four-minute power play in which they had only two shots, countered by one by Detroit’s Sergei Fedorov, which went into the net.

That prompted early derision from many of the announced 16,005, the third sellout of the season at the Great Western Forum.

It appeared that all of the enthusiasm of two days ago, in which effort was cited as a partial result of a players-only meeting in Ottawa that turned into a well-played, if losing game to the Senators, had been a flash across the locker room.

And it looked as though the Red Wings, on the final game of a three-game trip, would not return to Detroit empty-handed after blowing a two-goal lead in a tie at San Jose and losing to Colorado.

And then Perreault used a screen by Robitaille to fire in a 35-footer for his first goal since the season’s fourth game, cutting the Red Wing lead to 3-1.

Robitaille and Glen Murray perhaps overdid it on a pitch-and-catch in front of the net during a Kings’ power play, but got away with the whole process when Robitaille banged in his 12th goal of the season to cut things to 3-2.

And O’Donnell scored his first goal of the season, pounding a shot in front 12 feet away to make it 3-3.

All--well most--of the first-period mistakes were overshadowed by the Kings’ third three-goal period of the season, the first since Nov. 21, when Chicago was in town.

It was 20 minutes of desperation hockey, the kind the Kings hadn’t been playing all season. It was a period in which they outscored Detroit, 3-0, while being outshot, 20-13.

And then came the final period and the inevitable goal by Holmstrom and the inevitable Red Wing victory.

The questions remain about Robinson’s future with the Kings. He is in the last season of a four-season, $3-million contract and had been offered an open-ended extension just before training camp, one he had said he would welcome. That offer was mulled for a bit and now, said Taylor, “is on the back burner.”

Translation: It’s no longer available.