Early Score by Red Wings Puts Kings Behind 8-Puck

No miracles. No spectacular overtime goals.

No, only cold, hard calculations, the kind you take to Las Vegas.

When Sergei Fedorov scores, the Red Wings are 18-2-2.

When the other guys score first, the Kings are 5-33-1.

Fedorov’s goal at 15:47 of the first period got Detroit off and winging.

Todd Gill celebrated his return from a 24-game, injury-induced respite by adding a second-period goal, and the Red Wings won their fourth game in a row, 2-1, Wednesday night at Joe Louis Arena.

Luc Robitaille had the Kings’ goal, and at game’s end another cold, hard calculation stared them in the face.

They had lost a chance to gain ground in the Western Conference playoff race, staying seven points behind eighth-place Calgary but now with only eight games to play.

By Coach Larry Robinson’s pregame calculations, the Kings had to win eight of their last nine games and hope Calgary and Edmonton play no better than .500 hockey.

Now it’s eight of eight. Calculate what Vegas would do with that one.

“It doesn’t look good, but I don’t give a damn,” Robinson said. “We’re going to play it hard right to the end. I want them to play hard right to the end, and anybody who doesn’t want to, won’t be playing.”

It’s what he uses to forestall the inevitable. Robinson, who is finishing a four-year contract, has said that if they don’t make the playoffs, the issue concerning his future behind their bench is probably “academic.”

Whether he jumps or is pushed is the unknown.

With that hanging over him, he refuses to look up.

Or down.

“I’ve got to concentrate on what’s at hand here,” he said. “I have to be fair to myself, I have to be fair to the team, I have to be fair to these players. Most of all, I’ve got to be fair to the players.

“If they’re out there giving this kind of effort, then I’ve got to give this kind of effort. If I’m thinking about other things, then I’m not being fair to them. I’ve told them that what I expect of them, they should expect of me and that’s what they will get.

“I’m just doing my job.”

For as long as the job lasts.

It was a game in which they figured to do well. The Kings have beaten Detroit twice, including the last time the two teams played here, when Robitaille’s sprawling, spinning, highlight-film goal in overtime finished the Red Wings.

“They played a really good game,” Detroit Coach Scotty Bowman said. “I watched them last night against Boston [a game the Kings won, 2-1, in overtime], and they looked good then too. They’re playing like they did last year.”

Last year at this time, the Kings were playoff bound.

“If they had gotten in the playoffs again playing like they are now, they would be a tough opponent,” he said.

They were Wednesday, but not tough enough.

The beginning of the end came when Fedorov sneaked around the King crease and set up in front of goalie Stephane Fiset and merely reached out his stick to redirect Larry Murphy’s blue-line shot into the net for a 1-0 lead 15:47 into the game.

It was downhill for the Kings the rest of the night.

It became 2-0 when Gill put on a bit of highlight-film work himself, picking off a clearing pass by the Kings’ Ian Laperriere 35 feet in front of Fiset, then scoring on a shot taken while tripping over Rob Blake’s stick and falling.

Robitaille’s goal, at 15:58, was the consolation prize for the loss that gave the Kings their fourth loss in their last five games and a 1-2 record on this five-game trip that will largely determine whether their season ends 18 days hence, or continues into the playoffs.

Whether their coach stays or goes.

“You can’t worry about that now,” Blake said. “We’ve still got eight games to play. Then it’s time to go over all of those scenarios.”