Kings Get Their Second Wind

It was over early . . . and then it wasn’t.

Goals by Phoenix’s Keith Carney and Rick Tocchet had the game under control . . . and then it wasn’t.

The Kings, who had sulked their way into a hole too deep to climb out of only 24 hours earlier, got goals from Ziggy Palffy and Jozef Stumpel to match Phoenix, then Rob Blake’s first goal since Dec. 30 in a 5-2 victory Wednesday night at America West Arena.

Bob Corkum added a goal against his former teammates, and Palffy punctuated things by beating Sean Burke on a breakaway with 5:10 to play. Both Andy Murray, the Kings’ coach, and Blake, their captain, insisted that the game a night earlier and a time zone later had not been the disaster everybody branded it.

“I felt like last night we played 50 minutes,” Murray said.

The Ducks had played the other 10 in a 5-3 victory Tuesday night.

“If you look at it, we dominated them except for that time,” Blake added.

But on Wednesday night, the time was shorter, and the Kings, who inched up their record against Pacific opponents to 4-10-1, refused to quit against Phoenix, the second-place team in the division. L.A. fed off a 31-save effort by goalie Jamie Storr and a defensive effort that didn’t stop, even after first-period mistakes had cost them a 2-0 deficit.

“The save on Tocchet [in the first] and [Keith] Tkachuk [in the second] were big,” Blake said.

The Kings matched the inspirational goaltending by matching Phoenix hit for hit, no small task against a team that punctuates every play with a glove in the face or elbow to the ribs, when a stick isn’t digging into the midsection.

Rallying to tie it, 2-2, at the end of one period was something the Kings haven’t often done in the last couple of months.

“Every game is different,” said Palffy, who added two assists for a four-point night and has 13 points in his last eight games.

“We scored, but we played good defense too, and that was important.”

Palffy’s first goal came on a power play when he took a pass from Stumpel, who whirled with the puck and fired. Phoenix’s penalty-killers had been drawn to the left side of the ice, and Palffy had no opposition on the right in cutting the lead to 2-1.

The power-play goal was only the third the Coyotes had given up in 14 games. They had killed 46 of 48 penalties in that time and scored three short-handed goals.

Stumpel tied things after taking a pass from Jere Karalahti at 18 minutes, and as quickly as the Kings had fallen behind, they were even.

Blake’s goal, also on a power play, came on a sequence he started by blasting Phoenix’s Juha Ylonen on the boards, knocking the puck loose.

Palffy took it and sent it to Luc Robitaille, who pushed it back to Blake in ice so open he had time to settle the bouncing puck, tee it up and blast away for a 3-2 lead at 19:35.

It was his first score since a Dec. 30 game against Edmonton, ending a 15-game scoring drought that Blake refused to call a drought.

“I must have had 70 shots since then,” he said.

But none had found the net.

A 3-2 lead is hardly a comfort zone against Phoenix or, for that matter, for the Kings. Coming into Wednesday’s game, the Coyotes had scored more third-period goals than any team in the NHL: 63.

They got none on this night, and the Kings added goals by Corkum and Palffy that sent an announced 14,029 slumping into the night.

“We let it slip away,” said Phoenix winger Dallas Drake. “We got a lead and then fell right into their game plan. I don’t know how many turnovers we had. I only know that when we have a 2-0 lead, we need to make it 3-0, 4-0. We lack the killer instinct.”

Added Tocchet: “We can’t play this way in the playoffs.”