Past, Future: Nice Present

It was the first night . . . and the last.

In their first home game of the season, on their last opening night at the Great Western Forum, the Kings got a look at a bit of their future in rookie winger Josh Green and their past in his linemate, veteran winger Luc Robitaille.

In the end, the past made the difference.

Robitaille sent most of a sellout crowd of 16,005 home happy Friday night when he scored on a slap shot from just over the blue line at 2:47 of overtime for a 2-1 victory over the Boston Bruins.

The shot came after a clearing pass from defenseman Rob Blake.

Next season’s home opener will be in the Staples Center, but this one featured Green’s first NHL goal, matched by a goal by Boston’s Antti Laaksonen.

The tie was fashioned after Boston, largely dormant offensively for more than 36 minutes--the seemingly hibernating Bruins had been outshot, 16-7, until that time--became much more animated near the end of the second period.

Laaksonen’s goal, also his first in the NHL, punctuated a momentum-grabbing series that began when Jason Allison was taken down in open ice by the Kings’ Philippe Boucher, keeping Stephane Fiset’s shutout alive.

Suddenly awakened, the Bruins kept the pressure on, tying the score on Laaksonen’s goal, which came on a 20-footer shortly after Boston had won a faceoff.

That tie very nearly became a 2-1 Bruin lead when Jason Allison had an open-net back-handed shot available until the Kings’ Steve Duchesne barged into the goal, knocking it off its moorings and drawing a delay-of-game penalty.

On a night of lasts, there were a fair number of firsts, many of them involving Green, who changed his number from 47 to 21 to try to change his luck. It might well have worked.

Then again, it might have just been a case of seized opportunity.

Green skated on the second line in the season’s first two games, at least until the Kings went on the power play, when he was supplanted by Sandy Moger. The reason given is that Moger is a right-handed shot, and his presence served to balance the left-handed Yanic Perreault and Luc Robitaille on the power-play line.

But Moger was detected in the crease two times on apparent power-play goals on Monday at Vancouver, and Green retained his position with the Perreault line, skating the second shift of the Kings first power play.

Briefly.

Green, who acknowledges that his value lies in his size, and that he plays best when he plays close, planted his 6-foot-4, 212-pound self near the net and batted a rebound of Doug Bodger’s shot past the Bruins’ Byron Dafoe to give the Kings a 1-0 lead at 10:50 of the first period.

It broke Dafoe’s shutout streak at 162 minutes 19 seconds, and it came on Green’s first NHL shot.

Bodger had let fly from near the blue line, with Robitaille also getting an assist, his first of two points in the game.

The play was triggered by Perreault, who has had a hand in the first five King goals of the season, scoring three, assisting on another.

The Kings got a little help from a friend in the second period when an apparent goal by Boston’s Rob DiMaio was waved off when video goal judge John Pemberton detected Chris Taylor’s left skate in the crease in front of Fiset.

Taylor had set up close to the net, then wheeled left to get around Blake only to find himself prematurely in the crease.

It was a familiar scenario, last seen in Vancouver on Monday, when two apparent King goals were negated by similar circumstances involving Moger, one an obvious infraction, the other being somewhat suspect.

Fiset kept things close in the third period, turning away a point-blank shot by Allison with 11:30 remaining.

By then, Boston had kept firing away at Fiset, outshooting the Kings, 10-4, over a 14-minute period.

That closed the Bruins to within 25-22 by the end of regulation.

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J.A. ADANDE: Were the Kings celebrating the dawn of a new era or the beginning of the end? Page 8