Dallas Hands Kings Depressing Defeat

Rob Blake played 29 minutes 33 seconds of hockey Saturday night, and fatigue was not a problem at game’s end.

Depression was.

“That was 29 minutes too long, the way I played tonight,” said Blake after the Kings’ 3-2 loss to Dallas that knocked them further behind in the race for a playoff spot in the Western Conference.

Because of an injury to Doug Bodger and the alleged instigation of a fight with the Stars’ Grant Marshall that cost Sean O’Donnell more time in the penalty box than Napoleon had on Elba, the Kings were two defensemen shy of a load in the second period.

That might explain why they were defenseless when the Stars’ Guy Carbonneau scored to break a 2-2 tie.

Dallas’ Brent Severyn raked a puck away from an end-boards scrum, eyed goalie Stephane Fiset’s stick and sent it around same to Carbonneau, who was sailing down the middle of the ice.

Blake was in front of Fiset and something of a spectator to Carbonneau’s one-timing Severyn’s pass past Fiset for a 3-2 Dallas lead.

“I just got caught,” said Blake. “I’ve got to tie him up. It was just a bad play by me.”

And a good one by Severyn, who beat Jozef Stumpel to the puck, which was freed from a tie-up between the Kings’ Mattias Norstrom and Dallas’ Dan Keczmer.

The goal put a damper on the Kings’ comeback from a 2-0 deficit. Dallas had built its advantage with goals from Brett Hull and Pat Verbeek, both of which were scored when Blake was on the ice and involved.

Or not.

The first came when Hull shot from 30 feet away, Blake taking the puck in his shin pads. Hull merely gathered in the rebound and shot again, with Blake now screening Fiset.

The second came when Joe Nieuwendyk had the puck at the end boards, with Blake caught in a moment of indecision.

“I don’t know. I have to see that play again,” he said of his role in it.

What he will see is a clear Nieuwendyk sliding the puck to Verbeek, who made it 2-0, dampening the spirits of many of the announced crowd of 12,702.

No problem. The Kings mitigated both Dallas goals in a 40-second span of the second period.

Ray Ferraro took the puck from the red line, through most of the Stars’ defense and whiffed on a shot from the left wing. Make that fortuitously whiffed, because everybody reacted to the first try, leaving nobody in position to counter the second before it sailed into the net.

Quickly, the Kings’ Craig Johnson made it 2-2 when he rebounded a missed shot by Ian Laperriere at 5:14.

The two goals seemed to awaken the Stars, who treated their ice as though it was quarantined for the rest of the second period. They kept pressure on Fiset, who was called on to make save after save, one--on a shot by Jamie Langenbrunner--by poking out his stick while lying on his side during a Dallas power play.

“When you have a lead on the road, you’ve got to look at the game as a territorial game,” Dallas Coach Ken Hitchcock said. “Once we got the territorial game back in the second period, we played real well.”

It was left to the Stars merely to protect a third-period lead, something they are exceptional at doing, though on Saturday night, it wasn’t easy.

The Kings had appeared to tie the score, 3-3, on a power-play goal by Donald Audette at 6:56 when he batted in a rebound of a Philippe Boucher shot.

The operative word here is batted, because video goal judge John Wenkelman determined that Audette’s stick was being wielded fungo-style, above the cross bar, and the goal was waved off.

From there, it became a matter of righting their defense, which the Stars did in extending a 15-game unbeaten streak (9-0-6) against the Kings.

“They never seemed to panic,” Ferraro said. “There’s a reason that they’re one of the best in the league. They play the system . . . and they know how to play with a lead.”