Blake, Kings Prove to Be Big Hitters, 5-4

With seven minutes, 50 seconds played Tuesday night, Rob Blake took dead aim at the Penguins’ Matthew Barnaby and knocked him in the general vicinity of the Allegheny River.

The hit, a clean one, came right in front of the Kings’ bench, where for 7:50, there had been confusion, lethargy and a great view of Pittsburgh’s answer to the Joffrey Ballet: Jaromir Jagr.

The Kings, to that point, had one shot.

They trailed by one goal.

And then Blake had one hit.

“If you see that he’s going to hit somebody like that, it’s going to prop you up,” said Ziggy Palffy, who had the first and last goals in the Kings’ 5-4 victory, their fifth in a row.

“It’s going to make you work hard . . . to work like him.”

Blake added teeth-rattling slams of Martin Straka and Alexei Kovalev, just to keep the game moving along, and he assisted on Palffy’s first goal, which broke an 0-for-10 power-play skid.

In his spare time, Blake added a goal of his own to give the Kings a 3-2 lead from which they weren’t headed.

Threatened, but not headed.

Tuesday was election day in Pittsburgh, and Jagr could have had 14,272 votes at the Civic Arena, give or take a few absentees, for any office he sought.

“He’s the best player in the league,” said Blake, who was on the ice and had a close-up view of Jagr’s two third-period goals.

He missed goals in the first and third periods by Robert Lang on which Jagr had assists.

The Kings also got two goals from Donald Audette, his fifth and sixth in the last five games, and one of them came after highlight moves by Vladimir Tsyplakov, who picked Jagr’s pocket in the neutral zone.

“I went over there and I was hooked, and I had to beat one guy and I beat him,” Tsyplakov said. “So then a second guy came and I made my move and gave it to [Audette].”

To be less succinct:

Tsyplakov stole the puck from Jagr, then escaped Jagr’s attempt to hook him with the stick.

Then Tsyplakov spun Brad Werenka around like a top with a fake, and cut right, rendering Straka’s rescue attempt futile. Tsyplakov sent the pass under Michal Rozsival’s stick to Audette, who sailed in alone to make it 4-2.

“I got dizzy watching him,” said Audette, laughing.

It was a game that got wild and woolly in the third period after 40 physical minutes.

“It was more wide open that I would have liked it,” King Coach Andy Murray said. “It was a great one for the fans, but it was hard on the coach.”

Lang gave Pittsburgh a 1-0 lead 2:48 into the game, and that was countered by Palffy’s power-play goal.

If the hit on Barnaby hadn’t been a sign that it was going to be Blake’s night, Palffy’s goal certainly was.

Pittsburgh’s Tom Chorske poked away a somewhat careless pass from Blake to Fran Kaberle near the blue line, and it was left to Kaberle to rescue things. He beat Chorske to the puck and sent it to Blake, whose pass this time was dead on Palffy’s stick, ahead of the field.

Audette’s first goal, which came on a second-period power play, made it 2-1--”They’re the best power play in the league and they showed a little of that tonight,” said Penguin Coach Kevin Constantine--but Lang tied it 46 seconds into the third period.

Only 66 seconds later, Blake untied it on a shot from 50 or so feet away, taken after the Kings’ Jozef Stumpel beat Lang on a faceoff. The puck was accidentally redirected by a Pittsburgh stick past goalie Peter Skudra for a 3-2 lead.

That became 4-2 on Audette’s shot; 4-3 on Jagr’s first goal; and 5-3 when Palffy intercepted a pass intended for Jagr and sailed in alone.

“That was no surprise,” Palffy said of his bit of larceny. “Everybody in the stands knew he was going to get the puck.”

Jagr’s final goal made the final 2:11 a bit tense.

Blake dismissed the catalytic effect of his check of Barnaby, and of the two later blasts.

“I don’t go looking for hits,” he said. “If you look for them, you aren’t going to find them. I think my last game [at Chicago] was my best game this year, and I didn’t have a hit at all.”