Palffy Lands Shot That Inspires Kings

At Sunday’s end, Rob Blake carried four stitches over his left eye.

Defense partner Mattias Norstrom had three near his right.

But in a game of heavyweights, a brawl in which there were no fights but more punches than Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis combined to throw a night earlier, was decided by a middleweight working alone.

Ziggy Palffy’s breakaway goal in the third period answered a Phoenix charge and gave the Kings a 3-2 victory over the Coyotes in a game that lifted Los Angeles’ point total to 26, tied with Ottawa of the Eastern Conference for most in the NHL, and showed how far the team has come in a bit more than three weeks.

Make that in a bit more than six months.

“When you have a superstar like that, who gets one chance like he did tonight and goes out and buries it . . . last year we didn’t have that,” said Blake, to whom last season is a lingering nightmare.

Palffy’s lone shot answered a goal by Greg Adams that had cut the King lead to 2-1 with more than half a period to play.

Adams giveth, and Adams taketh away. Less than a minute later he sent a pass toward Rick Tocchet in the neutral zone that the Kings’ Vladimir Tsyplakov anticipated.

Palffy was off and running with Tsyplakov’s pass.

“I just saw Ziggy open and that was it,” said Tsyplakov, who has two goals and two assists in his last two games, both played in place of injured Luc Robitaille.

The goal stilled what had been a raucous crowd, announced as 13,171 at the America West Arena.

“It was huge,” said King center Bryan Smolinski. “It kind of let the air out of their tires a little bit.”

It also helped the Kings complete a turnaround from a 6-3 loss to Phoenix in Staples Center on Oct. 22, when the Coyotes scored five unanswered goals to overcome a 3-1 King lead.

That Tocchet scored a bit more than three minutes later kept things tense, but this time the Kings had the answer.

It involved time. A lot of it.

“The way we played the first period 10 games ago is the way we played all night tonight,” Blake said. “It wasn’t the 20 or 30 minutes like we had that last time.”

Since that debacle against Phoenix, the Kings are 7-1-2, and they are 2-1-1 since losing Robitaille and Jozef Stumpel because of injuries.

“Going back to the game before, they took it to us, so we owed them something,” Smolinski said.

The debt was mitigated somewhat by Phoenix mistakes.

“We gave them some major breakdowns,” said Tocchet. “It seemed that every time we gave them something, they scored.”

The first of those scores came on a Blake power-play goal in the opening period. The lead became 2-0 when Craig Johnson intercepted a pass intended for Keith Carney. Johnson’s breakaway goal came 15:53 into the second and was only the second shot of that period for the Kings.

It came shortly after the Kings had killed off another penalty, a mission they faced much of the night. Phoenix had six power-play opportunities and converted none. Included in that was a two-minute penalty against Norstrom, who hooked Shane Doan to prevent a breakaway with 19 seconds left in the second period.

Phoenix opened the third period with 1:41 of power-play time remaining, and the Kings killed it off.

“That also was huge,” Smolinski said. “It’s all about momentum.”

The Kings know something about momentum.

The win gave them an 11-4-4 record, good for 26 points, one more than anybody in the Western Conference and tied with Ottawa.

“It’s scary, isn’t it?” Coach Andy Murray said.

Absolutely frightening.