Kings Are Caught Napping and Lose, 4-1, to Buffalo

If it were football, there would be flags all over the field.

Basketball, they would be wearing out the free throw line.

Welcome to Buffalo, home of hibernation hockey. Push and shove, clutch and grab and every stick has four hands on it. Forecheck like a Doberman and shoot when you feel lucky.

Last one to leave, turn out the lights.

Zzzzzzzzzz.

And then, a flash. An alarm. For 25 seconds Saturday night, the Sabres stirred and Brian Holzinger and Alexei Zhitnik scored in Buffalo’s 4-1 win over the Kings.

Their goals produced a 2-1 advantage, which was enough because hibernation hockey plays best with a lead, and the Sabres had one to spoil Donald Audette’s return to the city and hockey style he escaped in December when he joined the Kings.

Audette, who had only one goal in his previous nine games, scored another in the second period to give the Kings a 1-0 lead that was sufficient to prod Buffalo into action, however briefly.

And finally.

“We had two breakdowns in our zone and that was it,” King Coach Larry Robinson said.

It was, because King goalie Jamie Storr was matching Buffalo’s Dominik Hasek save for save, one-upping Hasek--probably the best goalie in the world--because the saves were more difficult, because King mistakes produced point-blank efforts by Derek Plante and Michael Peca in a first period in which the Kings were outshot at one point, 10-4.

Storr held on and the Kings had a 1-0 lead going into the third period.

“That was frightening, to say the least,” said Buffalo Coach Lindy Ruff, who has enough frightening things going on in his own locker room, which is fraught with dissension that was the product--or producer--of a 4-8-3 span of 15 games.

“But, you know, when you’re losing those type of things happen,” Ruff said.

No kidding.

And when you’re losing--the Kings are 1-5 in their last six games--the Sabres’ third period happens too. In 25 seconds, the Kings were down a goal and it was over.

“We had the game,” said the Kings’ Rob Blake, who was beaten by Peca on Buffalo’s third goal.

Peca also had an empty-net goal.

“We don’t have the confidence [to overcome a two-goal burst],” Blake said. “You’re only down one goal, but we get kind of rattled, and then we give up a third one that shouldn’t have gone in either. And when you give up a lead with Hasek in goal, that’s pretty tough.”

In this case, it was impossible, giving the Kings a 1-2 record on this trip, perhaps their most important of the season.

“It makes the Philadelphia game [Monday] that much more important,” Blake said.

The Flyers are only the best team in the East, some say the league, right now.

Saturday’s game turned on two plays, both of them mistakes in the Kings’ zone.

On the first, Holzinger raced in from the right wing, took a pass from Geoff Sanderson and beat Kings’ winger Sandy Moger to get open for a shot at Storr.

“We got a little anxious,” Robinson said. “Basically, they had a three on three. We had a mixup between lines, our forward and defense, and there was no way that Sandy could catch the guy.”

And it was tied, 1-1, at 2:13 of the third period.

And then it was over when Zhitnik scored against his former team, taking a pass from Sanderson and slicing between defensemen Garry Galley and Sean O’Donnell to draw a bead on Storr.

“We had the game with a lead going into the third,” Blake said. “But back-to-back goals in 25 seconds hurts. You could just see the bench deflate.

“The way it happened, if they had scored one and then five minutes or so [later] score another . . . but when they score them so quick, you can see the momentum going.”

And going and gone.