Belfour Plays the Kings as If They’re on a String

Andy Murray is stubborn.

Hard-headed.

The Kings’ coach is unwilling to listen to reason, even when the facts are staring him in the face.

“I’d like to play them again,” he said Wednesday night after the Dallas Stars got goals from Mike Modano, Sergei Zubov and Brett Hull in a 3-1 victory that stretched the Kings’ string of futility against them to 22 games.

“I’d like to play them until we beat them. It’s like when you’re a kid and you’ve just lost the third game in a best-of-three. You want to play best-of-five, and then seven and nine. For the world championship. The championship of the universe. The Inter-Galactic Championship.”

It’s the logic of a crapshooter going broke in Las Vegas while waiting for the dice to thaw. The Kings are still looking for best-of-one, having gone 0-17-5-1 since 1995 against the Stars, and it looks as though the team’s record of 32 winless games against Philadelphia (0-27-5, from 1974-83) could be threatened before they can make their point.

On Wednesday, they played well, but not well enough.

“I don’t know if we could play better,” winger Luc Robitaille said. “Well, we could have scored more. If we have that kind of effort [tonight] at Nashville, we might get eight goals.”

The Kings had traffic in front of the net, had Rob Blake blasting away from the blue line 15 times, eight of the shots on net. They controlled the puck, kept it in the Dallas end of the ice and challenged all night.

“What did we get, 37, 38 shots?” Murray asked. The Kings had 37 shots to the Stars’ 18.

And came away empty, except for Craig Johnson’s first-period goal.

That’s because the Eagle flew for Dallas.

Goalie Eddie “the Eagle” Belfour also sprawled, kicked, ranged from board to board for the puck and frustrated the Kings all night.

“Other than our goalie, we were a mess,” Dallas Coach Ken Hitchcock said. “Our goalie saved our bacon. I thought this was one of the best games I’ve seen him play.”

He’s seen Belfour play a few good games lately. Belfour is on a five-game winning streak in which he has given up eight goals in 155 shots, a .948 save percentage.

Four of those wins have come since the Stanley Cup-winning goalie was snubbed for the All-Star game.

“He was good, but we made him look good, too,” said Bryan Smolinski, whose tip of Blake’s shot was smothered by Belfour only 1:29 into the game. That set the tone for the Kings.

“We must have had 20 scoring chances,” Murray said. “What did they get, four or five scoring chances?”

The Stars needed only one in the second period to win it. Zubov took a cross-ice pass with five seconds left on a power play and launched a shot that goalie Jamie Storr got with his stick, but tipped to teammate Mattias Norstrom’s stick and into the goal for a 2-1 lead.

“Matty played it right,” Storr said. “He was in the right place. I just had to go out and challenge the shooter.”

And instead, challenged his defenseman.

Dallas’ economy showed. The Stars had only two shots in the period, and one resulted in Zubov’s goal.

Hull’s insurance goal with 14.1 seconds to play went into an empty net.

The other goal came when Modano gave Dallas a 1-0 lead at 11:10 of the opening period. He finished with a goal and two assists.