Kings Prefer the Road

So much for home-cooking, home-and-hearth, home stands, home runs or maybe even “Home on the Range.”

Especially, so much for home-ice advantage.

After the Great Western Forum had hit back in a miserable four-game home stand, the Kings hit the road Monday night, where a third-period goal by Vladimir Tsyplakov earned them a 4-3 victory over Vancouver.

The goal, his third of the season and second in as many games, righted things after the Kings had failed to protect a 3-2 third-period lead, something they have not had much practice at lately.

They last had one in their last road game, at New Jersey.

Markus Naslund’s third-period goal had earned Vancouver a 3-3 tie.

“They don’t come easily, do they?” Coach Larry Robinson said. “I don’t know that it was so much blowing a lead. We made a mental error, and [Mark] Messier and that group pounce on every mistake you make.”

In this case, Alexander Mogilny won a race to the puck behind the King net after a faceoff and slipped a pass in to Naslund, who was loitering in front of the goal and poked it past Manny Legace at 14:22.

Still, the Kings refused to fold, and Tsyplakov’s goal came only 1:41 later, set up by Sean O’Donnell’s shot from just inside the blue line. The puck sailed goalward, where Josh Green was waiting to tip it.

Backup goalie Corey Hirsch turned back Green’s deflection, but Tsyplakov was standing by to bat in the rebound.

“That’s why I was there,” he said. “When you go to the net, good things happen.”

In this case, the good thing was reversing a pattern.

“We have been playing Murphy’s hockey,” Robinson said. “Anything that could go wrong has gone wrong.”

Said Luc Robitaille: “It was a big goal for us the way things have been going lately.”

Robitaille’s second goal of the game had given the Kings a 3-2 lead before 13,906, smallest crowd ever to see the Canucks play at General Motors Place.

Robitaille scored at nine minutes of the second period after Glen Murray picked off a pass near the blue line during a sloppy Vancouver line change. Murray sent it to Robitaille, who had Hirsch at his mercy from 15 feet.

The Kings had taken a 2-0 first-period lead with goals by Murray and Robitaille.

The first came on a Canuck power play. It took only 12 seconds to turn a one-man disadvantage into a 1-0 lead when Glen Murray intercepted a pass and sailed in on Garth Snow, scoring over his glove.

It was the fifth short-handed goal of the season for the Kings, tops in the NHL, and it matched the number of power-play goals they have generated, worst in the league.

It took only another 1:06 to make that 2-0 when Robitaille fired the rebound of a missed shot by Mattias Norstrom past Snow in a four-on-four situation only 15 seconds after Naslund tried to take Norstrom’s head off in a corner.

The second goal helped Vancouver Coach Mike Keenan determine it wasn’t Snow’s night. He had given up two goals on three King shots before being dismissed in favor of Hirsch, who fared much better.

He quickly turned back power-play shots by the Kings’ Galley and Tsyplakov and had seven saves the rest of the period.

He also got some help in the form of a short-handed goal by Mogilny, who took a pass from Messier and shot between Legace’s legs.

“I didn’t know how hard Mogilny shot the puck,” said Legace, who earned his second NHL victory in seven decisions, another beneficiary of a reversal of fortune.