Big Lead Turns Into Big Waste for the Kings

The way Larry Robinson figures it, the Kings have enough coaches, thank you.

And enough players to keep anybody from having to put in a lot of extra work.

What they don’t have is two points they should have had Tuesday night, and that’s why he was so upset after Andrew Cassels’ goal at 1:12 of overtime finished off Calgary’s rally from a two-goal, third-period deficit in a 5-4 win before an announced 15,247 in the Canadian Airlines Saddledome.

Too many coaches. Too much extra work by some stubborn people.

Cassels’ goal came when he took a pass from Cory Stillman and took on Steve Duchesne one-on-one in front of the King goal. Cassels deked right, then left, and left Duchesne sprawled on the ice. That done, King goalie Ryan Bach, making his first NHL start, was at Cassels’ mercy.

But the problems began much earlier, after the Kings had built a big lead.

“We’re up, 3-0, and we talk about keeping our shifts short in this building because the air is thin,” Robinson said. “[Luc] Robitaille, [Olli] Jokinen and [Glen] Murray got caught out twice over a minute shift and [Calgary got] two goals, and they’re back in the game. It’s as simple as that.”

Theoren Fleury and Valeri Bure scored the goals that cut the lead to 3-2 going into the third period.

Robinson was just warming up.

“They want to play it their way,” he said of his players. “They . . . wonder why we scream and yell. We were poor on the faceoffs [winning 32 of 69], and yet we still should have won the game. Can you imagine that?”

The Kings seemed to have righted themselves when Murray scored in the third period, taking a pass from Jokinen for a 4-2 lead. But it lasted only 1:34, cut by Stillman’s goal at 10:16 and a goal by Derek Morris off a faceoff near the King net.

Jeff Shantz beat Ian Laperriere on that one, sending the puck back to Morris, who fired it into the net from 25 feet to tie the game.

“Perfect,” Robinson said of the Flames’ play. “I couldn’t have thrown the puck back any better. They were moving each other within inches of where they wanted the puck to go. All it is is concentration. We told them, ‘If you’re losing [the faceoff], at least be even with the guy. Don’t let him be dead back with a potshot.’ ”

Morris was every bit of that, and Bach was on the ropes, playing before 15 family members, 185 miles from his suburban Edmonton home.

“He struggled a little bit, but he’s not the reason we lost,” Robinson said. “Three of the goals were difficult goals, but knowing there’s a young kid here, as a player, you don’t have to be a college graduate to know that we have to play strong defensively.”

Bach turned back 32 of Calgary’s 37 shots and admitted that he was tired in the third period.

But by then, Robinson said, he should have had an easier fate. The second-period goals rankled far into the night.

“[The Kings were] changing the game plan,” he said. “I’ll pass out some resumes around here, because obviously there’s some guys . . . who think their way is better than my way. So if they want to coach themselves, they might as well fill out a resume.

“But they won’t last very long because their way hasn’t been working. It was a complete collapse. I mean, we gave them the game, we absolutely gave them the game.”

It was a loss that put the Kings two games under .500, at 5-7-3, going into two games at the Great Western Forum, where they have won only one game all season.

“You don’t get these points back,” said Robinson, who vowed personnel changes--”to get the message across”--for Thursday night’s game against Nashville. “It would have been great for us to come in here and go back home with two wins under our belt. Instead, the thing that worries me the most about this is that it’s a devastating blow to the confidence level.

“I don’t know who the hell we think we are that we think we can sit on a two-goal lead or a three-goal lead or any lead. It’s just frustrating like hell, and you get tired of screaming and yelling.

“Sometimes they are brick walls. Brick walls between their shoulders.”

And now they have a coach who is going to try to become a mason.