Kings Are Powerless to Slow Down Blues

Let’s see, there were Luc Robitaille, Jozef Stumpel, Glen Murray, Rob Blake and Garry Galley. And Bryan Smolinski, Craig Johnson, Nelson Emerson, Jaroslav Modry and Jere Karalahti.

And there were Bob Corkum, Jason Blake and Kelly Buchberger and anybody else Coach Andy Murray could trot onto the ice for the Kings’ powerless play Friday night, short of hauling Wayne Gretzky out of his Staples Center luxury box.

And there was a St. Louis stonewall named Roman Turek, merely the NHL’s best goalie right now, according to the numbers. The Kings enhanced them Friday night in a 4-0 loss that was Turek’s league-leading sixth shutout.

Two goals by Michal Handzus and one each by Jochen Hecht and Pavol Dmitra went unmatched and gave the Blues their team-record 24th road victory of the season.

They gave the Kings a headache, mitigated only slightly by Phoenix’s 4-3 overtime loss to Nashville that kept the Kings in fifth place in the Western Conference playoff race.

“They made some of the mistakes that we made tonight and gave us opportunities,” Andy Murray said. “The difference in the game is one team’s ability to capitalize and the other team’s inability to capitalize. It is a case of one team’s taking advantage of their opportunities.”

And of the Kings failing to capitalize on more than 13 minutes of power-play time, going 0 for 7.

This is how desperate the Kings are:

With 4:33 to play, Hecht was sent to the penalty box for elbowing and Murray called King goalie Jamie Storr to the bench, opting for the usual last-minute six-skaters’ attack. Unorthodox, yes. Effective . . . well, that depends on how you measure power plays.

The Kings had four shots, two of them by Glen Murray and Emerson, who ended up mixed up with Turek in the net. Turek sorted out Kings from pucks and turned back all four shots and, yes, before the Kings could get Storr back onto the ice at the end of the power play, Dmitra administered the coup de grace: an empty-net goal.

“Even if we had been playing five-on-five, I would have pulled the goalie,” Andy Murray said. “What good does it do to pull him in the last minute when you’re down, 3-0? I still thought, even after we were behind, 3-0, that we could get a goal.

“People who come to see you play want to see you be aggressive.”

Before many of the announced 18,118 had settled into their seats for the 5:30 p.m. start, there was plenty of aggression.

St. Louis’ Scott Pellerin went off for hooking 10 seconds into the game, starting the Kings’ power-play procession of futility.

After 20 minutes played mostly in their own end, the Kings succumbed to their own errors in the second period, when goals by Handzus and Hecht gave the Blues a 2-0 lead.

Handzus’ goal was perhaps some sort of poetic justice, because it combined the efforts of three players who had spent at least some of the first period on their backs, courtesy of King checks, several of them deemed worthy of retaliation by St. Louis teammates.

“I thought we responded to that well,” St. Louis Coach Joel Quenneville said. “Look at the Slovakians. . . . They all got excited.”

The first goal came on passes from Lubos Bartecko to Dmitra to Handzus for a shot that dribbled between Storr’s legs for a 1-0 lead.

That was followed only 1:12 later by Hecht’s goal, scored when Marty Reasoner took the puck from Karalahti near the blue line and sent a pass to Hecht.

It was all Turek needed.

“I think you’re looking at the Vezina [Trophy] winner this year,” said Storr of his counterpart. Turek’s 1.98 goals-against average coming into Friday’s game certainly helps. The Vezina is given to the NHL’s top goalie, and Turek’s star was enhanced after saving 31 King shots.

The Kings’ numbers also were extended, to three for their last 47 power-play opportunities.

“We ran into a hot goalie, but the bottom line is we’ve got to score on the power play,” Robitaille said.

*

DUCKS 4, SAN JOSE 2

Two goals by Teemu Selanne help Anaheim keep its slim playoff hopes alive. D5

SPEAKING UP

Donald Brashear says Marty McSorely should never play in NHL again. D5