Lights Out for Kings

By JIM HODGES

April 20, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Quick, somebody call Detroit. Tell the folks at Joe Louis Arena to take Friday off. Get some early holiday time with the family. Your services won’t be needed.

Sure, you’ve heard this before, but it keeps happening over and over. The dreaded power play reared its head again Wednesday night, as it has throughout the series, and if the first-period goals by Pat Verbeek and, particularly, Larry Murphy were somewhat tainted, they still sent Detroit winging home with a 3-0 victory and a four-game playoff sweep of the Kings.

The power-play goals were the Red Wings’ Nos. 7 and 8 of the series, and came within 2:31 of each other.

Detroit had 15 goals in the sweep. Three came on empty nets, including Sergei Fedorov’s with 51 seconds to play Wednesday night. Eight came on the power play.

The Kings outscored the Red Wings, 6-5, at five on five.

It shows what can happen when you take advantage of a man advantage.

When you don’t use the edge, you get swept.

“Power play, penalty killing, special teams,” King captain Rob Blake summed up. “They dominated and we didn’t.”

When arena officials couldn’t turn the lights on to begin the third period at Staples Center, the problem was first described as a power failure, then as a computer glitch.

The 18,118 assembled were satisfied with the power-failure explanation, because as far as they were concerned the power had failed for the Kings for the past four games.

They finished 0 for 23 on the power play in the series, 0 for 7 on Wednesday night.

“That’s not excusable,” King winger Ziggy Palffy said. “They scored two power-play goals in the first period. We have to learn to win like that.”

It’s a point of view.

Another, from the other side of the power play.

“As a penalty-killer, you take it upon yourself,” Detroit’s Darren McCarty said. “Malts [Kirk Maltby], Drapes [Kris Draper] and Marty [Lapointe], that’s our specialty. We take great pride in it. In the playoffs, it’s all momentum. The penalty kill can be a momentum-maker or breaker.”

And another view from Detroit’s boss: “When you look at the stats, it looks like we scored well on the power play, but on the other hand our penalty killing was strong,” Red Wing Coach Scotty Bowman said. “And when you look at the series, the difference was our penalty killing against their power play, and our power play was very productive.”

It broke the Kings, who killed off one penalty, then were beaten twice in the opening period.

Detroit was presented an opportunity at 16:03 of the opening period when Jozef Stumpel was detected cross-checking Chris Chelios, who wasn’t detected diving to the ice.

Verbeek’s goal came when Fedorov sent him a pass between Blake and Bob Corkum, with Verbeek having a largely empty net as a target for a 1-0 lead.

It became 2-0 when Murphy lofted a puck over a scrum in front of the King net on the Red Wings’ third power play.

He was aided by several events, the most significant of which was McCarty’s dive on King goalie Stephane Fiset, allegedly in pursuit of a loose puck.

Blake sized up the situation, saw Fiset buried under McCarty and dived in front of the net, but Murphy merely lifted the puck over him for the goal. Referee Paul Devorski turned a deaf ear to the protestations of King Coach Andy Murray, in accordance with Rule No. 78, which says that interference with a goalkeeper “will be enforced exclusively in accordance with the on-ice judgment of the referee(s), and not by means of video replay or review.”

“They said if they missed it, it could have been a mistake,” said Murray, who then amended, “they didn’t see [the replay] but from what they understood, it might have been a mistake.”

Said Fiset flatly: “It was definitely goalie interference.”

While the teams were lining up for the faceoff to begin the final 19 seconds of the period, the King coach was screaming at Devorski’s back, as the replay of the incident was being shown over and over on the four screens above his head.

The game was effectively over, though two periods remained to be played. Those final two stanzas belonged to the goalies, particularly the third period when Chris Osgood robbed Nelson Emerson on both a shot and a rebound, and Fiset made what his coach called one of the best saves he had ever seen.

Then the best team won.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS

Kings vs. Detroit

Detroit wins best-of-seven series, 4-0

* GAME 1: Detroit 2, Kings 0

* GAME 2: Detroit 8, Kings 5

* GAME 3: Detroit 2, Kings 1

* GAME 4: Detroit 3, Kings 0

HELENE ELLIOTT

Garry Galley knows playoff chances are not to be wasted, but the Kings let this slip away early. Page 3

San Jose: 3