Homecoming Rough for Palffy

Ziggy Palffy’s homecoming Sunday was a rude one, with whacks by Kevin Haller and Steve Webb and a challenge by Haller to fight.

It also featured a Palffy assist on a first-period, power-play goal by Mathieu Schneider. It’s the seventh consecutive game in which Palffy has an assist, a personal record, and the eighth game in a row in which he has a point.

“I don’t mind if they are clean hits,” Palffy said. “They are part of the game. As long as they help us win. This was a good game for us to win.”

Palffy was traded by the Islanders, along with Bryan Smolinski and Marcel Cousineau, to the Kings for Olli Jokinen, Josh Green, Mathieu Biron, plus a first-round choice in the 1999 entry draft (which turned out to be Taylor Pyatt).

Since then, Jokinen has been traded to Florida and Green to Edmonton. Biron is with Lowell of the AHL--a farm club New York shares with the Kings--and Pyatt was scratched on Sunday. He has played nine games and has one point, an assist.

Palffy’s 23rd point--eight of them on goals--tied him with Boston’s Jason Allison going into the Bruins’ game at Toronto on Sunday night. Palffy is off to the best offensive start of his career, but played a different game Sunday.

“You probably saw Ziggy dump more pucks into the end or flip more pucks out defensively that help winning teams win than most people in this building are used to seeing,” Coach Andy Murray said.

Palffy was the primary offensive threat for some bad Islander teams before coming to the Kings.

“They didn’t need me to score goals [Sunday],” he said, shrugging.

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Smolinski, who scored on Saturday and has 10 points, was scratched Sunday to be in Southern California with his new-born daughter. Cousineau backed up King goalie Jamie Storr.

With Smolinski out, Ian Laperriere moved from wing to center and Craig Johnson came back into the lineup after being scratched for six games.

Winger Tomas Vlasak also was scratched and Jason Blake moved onto the line with Palffy and Jozef Stumpel.

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While King assistant Mark Hardy was running the defensemen and penalty killers (who took care of all six Islander power plays, including one 5-on-3 advantage that lasted 45 seconds), wife Kristina was running the New York Marathon, with a goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon in only her second race at the distance.

Running much of the race into a severe headwind, she finished in 3 hours 46 minutes--16 minutes better than she ran in the L.A. Marathon, but one minute shy of the 3:45 she needed for next year in Boston.

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Dave Taylor, the Kings’ senior vice president and general manager, had a doubleheader of sorts on Saturday when he spent the morning at Madison Square Garden watching 16-year-old daughter Jamie riding in the National Horse Show.

Jamie Taylor competed in an equitation event, the national Maclay finals, in which the rider--not the animal--is judged. Her horse stumbled, keeping her from reaching Sunday’s finals.

After watching his daughter, Dave Taylor boarded a bus for East Rutherford, N.J., where he watched the Kings beat the Devils, 2-1.