Kings Keep Streak Rolling in Detroit

A hockey team feeds off its goaltending, and on Friday night, the Kings feasted off Stephane Fiset.

He was passive when he needed to be, aggressive the rest of the night and turned in a 33-save performance that was bolstered by Luc Robitaille’s goal early in the third period of a 3-2 win over the Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena.

Particularly important was Fiset’s second-period stop on a breakaway by Steve Yzerman, shortly after Detroit had tied the score, 2-2.

“I saw him coming and I was nervous,” said Fiset of the sight of Yzerman--who has 616 goals--with the puck on his stick and only the King goalie between him and the net. “With Steve Yzerman, you have to know that he’s going to make a move and you can’t be too aggressive. On that one, he was going through my legs, and I closed them.

“Next time maybe he makes a different move and he scores.”

The save kept the game in order after the Kings had lost their 2-1 lead.

“It was huge,” Robitaille said. “We feed off the goaltending, and it’s been great lately, both Steph and Jamie Storr.”

Storr, who has won four games in a row, is scheduled to play tonight at Buffalo.

The win was the second in as many games for the Kings on their seven-game, 11-night odyssey through four time zones. It was their fifth consecutive victory.

Friday night’s win was particularly satisfying.

“That was definitely a playoff-type game,” said Robitaille, whose game-winning goal was his sixth in the last 10 King victories. “It was a level above usual.”

That level included most of the whistles being punctuated by a shove, an elbow or, at minimum, a belligerent look, and it included a dozen power-play opportunities, seven for the Kings, who failed to cash in any.

“The first couple of power plays were pretty bad, but on the rest of them, we played pretty well,” Coach Andy Murray said. “Both teams killed penalties pretty well tonight.”

And often.

One the Kings couldn’t kill yielded Detroit’s first goal. The Red Wings took a 1-0 lead on Yzerman’s score from the right faceoff circle with both Mattias Norstrom and Rob Blake watching from the penalty box.

It came while Detroit was turning up the pressure enough to outshoot the Kings, 10-1, in the final half of the opening period.

The Red Wings kept up that pressure to open the second, but it dissipated a bit when the Kings received goals from Ian Laperriere and Glen Murray within 54 seconds of each other for a 2-1 lead.

Laperriere’s goal came after a pass from Donald Audette with only Tomas Holmstrom and Detroit goalie Chris Osgood to beat. Laperriere took the direct approach, shooting just as Holmstrom hauled him down. Laperriere bowled into Osgood just after the shot, and the puck barely beat the King into the net.

When everything was untangled, the game was tied, and that was quickly altered when Bryan Smolinski spotted Glen Murray behind the defense and sent a pass his way.

Murray raced in alone on Osgood and the goalie didn’t fare as well as his King counterpart had with Yzerman. Murray’s goal was his 20th of the season.

Vyacheslav Kozlov took care of the King lead when he took a pass from Igor Larionov with Smolinski on his back, riding him out of the play.

Undaunted, Kozlov circled back, took the puck and found himself alone in front of Fiset, with time to fake left, then move right, back-handing it into the goal.

Momentum, fickle all night, had turned Detroit’s way, but Fiset quickly took care of that by handling Yzerman’s breakaway and all of the other shots the rest of the night.

Robitaille’s 30th goal of the season, scored from a tough angle on the left wing after he took a pass from Ziggy Palffy, added to a 44-points-in-eight-games package the two and Jozef Stumpel have fashioned.