Something Familiar About Kings’ Loss

Dallas Coach Ken Hitchcock is fond of calling his team’s play “territorial,” which means they rule an area of the ice.

Usually, it’s the area where you want to skate, the area closest to the Stars’ goal, but in the Kings’ case, it’s the cities of Dallas, Inglewood or anywhere else the teams meet.

One of the reasons the Stars are in rarified territory atop the NHL is their dominance of the Kings, as exemplified Thursday night when mistakes were turned into goals by Dallas’ Benoit Hogue and Brett Hull in a 2-1 victory before an announced crowd of 14,888 at the Great Western Forum.

The loss, and Calgary’s 2-1 victory over Montreal, dropped the Kings to eight points from the eighth and final Western Conference playoff berth with 11 games to play.

The Stars’ play against the Kings defines dominance. Dallas is 11-0-6 in its last 17 games against the Kings, 5-0 this season, and if the Kings began Thursday night as though none of that had happened, well, it merely forestalled the inevitable: a one-goal Dallas victory. All five this season have been by one goal.

“I think we came out and did exactly what we wanted to do,” said King defenseman Garry Galley. “We wanted to play in their end and get the puck deep in their end and get our forecheck going and get some chances at the net, which we did . . .

“Unfortunately, we didn’t get a puck out [of their defensive end] and it cost us a goal.”

That was scored by Hogue, a recycled Star who was brought back from exile in Tampa Bay on Sunday.

Hogue took a cross-ice pass from Joe Nieuwendyk, who had beaten Donald Audette to the puck on the side boards. Hogue’s goal was his first back in a Dallas uniform after scoring 11 with Tampa Bay.

That helped settle things, which had been unsettled early when the Kings got off three shots in the first minute, then three more in a power play in which there were Kings around the net for rebounds. That has been Coach Larry Robinson’s fondest wish all season, but in this case goalie Roman Turek merely ate the puck alive and kept the Kings scoreless.

That was remedied in the second period when Luc Robitaille took a pass from Ray Ferraro and rammed home his 33rd goal of the season. Ferraro beat Sergei Zubov badly for the puck, then gave him a parting shot before turning to see Robitaille’s shot that tied the score, 1-1.

It didn’t last.

It never does against Dallas.

Again, a mistake in the Kings’ end was turned into a goal as has happened so often against the Stars this season.

In this case, Mike Modano picked the puck cleanly off the stick of Kings’ defenseman Philippe Boucher, went to Stephane Fiset’s right and flipped a pass to Hull, who scored over Fiset’s stick for a 2-1 lead.

The way Dallas plays defense, that generally is enough. The Stars have given up only 141 goals all season and no team in the NHL has surrendered fewer.

And Dallas with a third-period lead is murder.

The Stars have kept leads with defensive forays like one in the third in which the Kings, on a power play, had doorstep shots by Ferraro and Audette, each turned back by Turek.

They then suffered the ignominy of Rob Blake’s blast from the point bouncing off the post, denying them the game-tying goal and effectively finishing off the power play.

A shot off the post later by Sandy Moger merely punctuated things.

In the end, the Kings outshot Dallas, 32-26, and made Turek a hero.

The Kings have made heroes out of many Star goalies.

“We’ve had trouble with Los Angeles all year,” Hitchcock said hours before the Stars had little real trouble in beating the Kings again.

Instead, Dallas caused trouble because the Kings leave for a difficult five-game trip that begins Sunday in Denver with them looking uphill at a playoff berth, taking heart mainly because that road at least doesn’t lead through Dallas.