Close Encounters Are Worst Kind for Kings

The Stars came out Wednesday night and held a convention in front of the net.

Some of the Kings decided not to attend.

Brett Hull, Brian Skrudland and Joe Nieuwendyk scored for Dallas in a 3-2 win, and all three shots came from within arm’s reach of King goalie Stephane Fiset, who finished the night hooked up to an IV because of leg cramps.

Thus, perhaps the most important trip of the season began as so many others have: with a loss, and with a big climb ahead.

It’s perhaps an unclimbable mountain.

“We needed to go 4-0 or 3-1 on this trip,” said Luc Robitaille, who had both King goals. “Now we’ve got to win three games.”

In Washington, Buffalo and Philadelphia, no easy task.

And a harder one without a tighter defense.

The Kings played Dallas close through two periods, giving up only Hull’s goal, which came after a botched clearing pass by Fiset with 3:34 played.

Robitaille countered on a breakaway in the second period when he darted out from behind teammate Yanic Perreault, intercepted Mike Modano’s pass at the Dallas blue line and beat goalie Roman Turek, who faced only 12 shots over two periods, 24 for the game.

That made it 1-1 going into the third, kept that way when Turek turned away Jozef Stumpel’s breakaway, again on an intercepted pass in the second period.

But Dallas is a patient team, among the league’s best at pressuring and playing conservatively.

“That’s what they do so well: wait for you to make a mistake and pounce on it,” King Coach Larry Robinson said. “In the first period, we played really well, played physically, and then we let up a bit.”

And made the mistake the Stars were awaiting in the third period.

And then another.

The first came when Dallas’ Dave Reid chased a puck into the corner, pursued by Stumpel, with Steve Duchesne unsure of exactly where he was supposed to be.

The answer was in front of the goal, cutting off Skrudland, who took a pass from Reid and banged the puck at Fiset, who rejected it. Skrudland was still alone in front of the net, with enough time to take another shot.

And enough time to take a couple more, with a cup-of-coffee chaser, had he needed them.

Garry Galley, in a sandwich between Skrudland, at the net, and Mike Keane, a little farther up the ice, couldn’t get to the goal in time to help.

“It was nobody’s fault,” Duchesne said.

“It was a miscommunication,” Robinson said, adding that it might have worked out better had Duchesne stayed at home to protect Fiset.

Whatever, it was a 2-1 Star lead at 4:18, and it became 3-1 when Nieuwendyk slipped into the slot behind the Kings’ Mattias Norstrom and banged a shot past Fiset.

By then the cramps, which had begun in the second period, had Fiset down for the count and Jamie Storr was brought in to replace him.

“I was trying so hard to keep us in the game,” said Fiset, who had 25 saves. “We need these games, and it’s up to the goalies--either me or Jamie--to do everything we can. I was nervous, because this game was so important and because I haven’t played much the past month [because of injuries and Storr’s play]. I think maybe I was so nervous that it’s what hurt me.”

Storr didn’t face a shot in the final 9:22, but his counterpart, Turek, certainly did.

“We turned a pretty comfortable win into an uncomfortable finish,” Dallas Coach Ken Hitchcock said. “It’s a good way to start the second half, though.”

Two Dallas penalties gave the Kings a five-on-three advantage, which they turned into Robitaille’s second goal of the game and 27th of the season with 4:46 to play in the game.

The Kings continued to pound at Turek, whose penalty killers kept the Kings at bay for the rest of the power play and helped the Stars keep the best record in the NHL. They are 28-9-7, even after going 2-4-1 in the final seven games before the All-Star break.

No team has more than their 63 points.

Said King defenseman O’Donnell: “They play the kind of game everybody else would like to play.”

It’s the kind the Kings couldn’t counter Wednesday night, and now they travel to Washington to see if it gets any better. They do so with four losses in a row, so it can’t get much worse.