Kings Get Caught and Passed at End

With 1:51 to play Monday night, the Kings’ defensive system was savaged. Twenty seconds later, more than 58 minutes of effort was squandered and with it a potential L.A. victory.

Breakdowns near game’s end were turned into goals by Viktor Kozlov and Mark Parrish, resulting in a 4-2 Florida Panther victory that was a knife in the Kings’ stomach and had the team talking about playing across the state at Tampa tonight as, not the second game of a dreaded back-to-back, but as a way to stop the bleeding.

“It was a very difficult game for us to lose, but our mistakes allowed it to happen,” King Coach Andy Murray said. “All game, we had been solid in keeping ourselves out of outnumbered situations, but at the key point of the game, we don’t. We got caught.”

That key point came with the Kings leading, 2-1, on goals by Luc Robitaille and Ziggy Palffy, and with the offense still pressing in the Florida end.

At the end, it was pressing too much.

Pavel Bure pounced on a loose puck in the King end and sent a pass to Ray Whitney, who found himself sailing down the ice with Kozlov as company and only the Kings’ Mattias Norstrom as help for goalie Stephane Fiset.

The King forward who was supposed to be lingering around the blue line to thwart such things was otherwise occupied offensively, and Norstrom’s defensive partner, Rob Blake, was trying to head off Bure at the pass.

Trying, as it turned out, futilely.

“I should have stopped that pass,” Blake said.

Instead, it went to Whitney in open ice and Norstrom was faced with Whitney to his right with the puck and Kozlov to his left in eager anticipation.

Even in the minority, Norstrom tried to take charge.

“I tried to just give Whitney the long shot,” he said.

Instead, Whitney sent the puck under Norstrom’s stick to Kozlov to tie things, 2-2, and turn on the Panthers, who had been turned off much of the night.

“After it was 2-1, they were really playing their system and we were really frustrated,” Panther Coach Terry Murray said. “It was a great goal to tie it up, a great one-touch pass to create the two-on-one: Pavel to Whitney and away they go.”

Leaving the Kings behind.

While time was out to clear celebratory debris launched by the remainder of the announced 13,751 at National Car Rental Center, Andy Murray tried to salvage the night, gathering the Kings at the bench.

“I said, ‘Let’s take this point right now and get it to the overtime and take our chances there,’ ” Murray said. “ ‘We worked real hard here. Let’s complete the job here.’ ”

Instead of taking the point, the Kings missed the point, defensively. They won the ensuing faceoff, but failed to send the puck deep into the Florida end.

The puck was claimed by Florida, and the game-winner came when Bret Hedican launched a shot from near the blue line and Parrish got in the way to redirect it past Fiset.

“I never saw it,” Fiset said. “I think it was wide of the goal, but it hit something and went in.”

That something was Parrish’s stick. He was mired in traffic largely obstructing Fiset’s view.

Bure’s empty-net goal with 34 seconds to play was a mere statistics-padder, offering the Panthers a chance to claim the fastest three goals in team history.

It came on Bure’s only shot of the third period. The Panther right wing had only three all night, largely because the Kings played keep-away with him and made certain that, when he had the puck, he also had plenty of company.

“When you’ve got a lead like that, you should be in control,” Blake said. “We’d only given up like three shots when they scored [the game-tying goal].”

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