Kings Forget That Early Lead Only Goes So Far at Buffalo

There was a work stoppage midway through the first period Saturday night at HSBC Arena.

It was as though goals by the Kings’ Ziggy Palffy and Rob Blake were enough to take care of the Buffalo Sabres.

They weren’t. Not by a long shot. Well, actually, by several short ones.

Buffalo flexed its muscle, getting power-play goals from Vaclav Varada, Jean-Pierre Dumont, Stu Barnes and Dave Andreychuk in beating the Kings, 5-3, before an announced crowd of 14,325.

All save the second of Varada’s two goals--which was scored into an empty net--were accomplished by taking advantage of close-in scrums and traffic around the net.

“How many power plays did they have in the second period?” asked Blake. Told Buffalo had five, he added, “Ten minutes [of penalty killing]. That’s tough to do.”

In this case, it was impossible.

When Barnes fired in a goal while in a wrestling match in front of the crease, it gave Buffalo a 3-2 lead at 18:42 and finished off a three-goal Sabre second period. It also effectively finished off the Kings.

As usual.

They last won in Buffalo on March 15, 1993, and are 0-6-1 since.

On Saturday, it needn’t have been.

“Last night we were scared,” Coach Andy Murray said of Friday’s 4-1 season-opening victory at Washington, which was propelled by a quick 2-0 lead and sustained by defensive intensity all night long.

“Tonight we let up.”

The problem, said Blake, was the power plays. They made offensive flow impossible.

The problem, said Mattias Norstrom, was the power plays. They came when work stopped.

“Teams that don’t work give up penalties,” he added. “Teams that work get penalties.”

And it wasn’t as though the work ended in the second period.

“To be honest with you . . . I saw it starting at about 10 minutes of the first period,” said Murray. “I think it was a mentality question. We started doing things that weren’t part of the game plan. . . . You start thinking that it will start coming easier than it should, and you are in trouble.”

That, the Kings were.

They had six shots when Blake banged home his power-play blast six minutes into the game. They finished the first period with eight.

A lead that was golden in Washington was brass in Buffalo, and it tarnished in the second period.

Varada halved the lead when he converted a pass from Dumont into a goal at 5:36.

To that point, the Kings had been outshot, 6-1, in the period and the Sabres had picked up their pace.

“I think we were a little bit stunned,” Buffalo Coach Lindy Ruff said. “We played like we were . . . I didn’t like our intensity. We didn’t finish checks. . . We have a better offensive team than [the Kings do] and a better defensive team.”

That opinion needed validation, and it came on Varada’s first goal and on one by Dumont, who took Barnes’ pass from behind the net and beat King goalie Jamie Storr from arm’s length to tie things, 2-2, at 11:19.

Barnes’ power-play goal gave the Sabres the lead for good.

It came on a five-on-three man advantage, the product of a high-sticking penalty on Glen Murray and a slash of Buffalo’s Doug Gilmour by Storr, who objected to the crease being crowded and tried to use his paddle to clear some space.

It got even more crowded 47 seconds later when Andreychuk pushed his way into the neighborhood, wrestling all the while with the Kings’ Norstrom and Blake. Barnes’ centering pass bounced off the assembly in Storr’s face and crept into the net.

Andreychuk’s third-period goal--naturally, on a power play--mitigated a score by Glen Murray.

To that point, Buffalo goalie Mika Noronen, a 21-year-old rookie, had recovered from the early onslaught and started doing his Dominik Hasek imitation.

“I couldn’t give up another goal,” said Noronen, referring to when the Kings took their early lead. “I knew that if it got to 3-0, we would lose the game.”

Instead, the Kings got a lesson in the danger of complacency.

“Yesterday, we won because we went after them in the first period, second period and third period,” Norstrom said. “Today, we stopped at 10 minutes. We should know better.”

If not, Buffalo served up a reminder.