Kings’ Trip Begins With a 1-1 Tie Against Predators

It figured.

At sunrise Tuesday, the Kings had the NHL’s top two point producers in Ziggy Palffy and Luc Robitaille, the leading rookie scorer in Eric Belanger and the top-scoring defense tandem in Mathieu Schneider and Rob Blake.

At evening’s end, none had added to their totals in a game in which King goalie Steve Passmore and Nashville Predator counterpart Mike Dunham had spent staring at each other down 174 feet of ice.

Neither blinked.

A goal by the Kings’ Craig Johnson was matched by Nashville’s Vitali Yachmenev in the second period of a 1-1 tie at Gaylord Entertainment Center before an announced 13,594.

What followed was a mutual admiration society.

“I watched him,” said Passmore, who turned back 34 of 35 shots. “You have to. The puck’s at the other end. He made some great saves.”

Said Dunham, who stopped 25 of 26 King shots: “Steve Passmore played incredibly tonight. He was on top of his game.”

Dunham took pucks directly off the sticks of Glen Murray on a breakaway and Lubomir Visnovsky in overtime.

“I don’t know if it gets personal, but it is a challenge,” Passmore said of his counterpart.

Passmore answered by stopping outnumbered rushes in the second and third periods.

“I’m not worried about what he’s doing,” Dunham said. “I’m not playing against him. He can’t score against me. I’m more worried about the forwards.”

Each handled pressure differently.

Passmore spent timeouts watching the crowd, as he always does, and listening to their serenade.

“Of course, I hear them,” he said laughing. “How can you not hear them in here?”

Dunham becomes a karaoke fan during timeouts.

“I sing during TV timeouts,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what. Whatever’s on the scoreboard. They play a lot of country here.”

In Nashville? You think?

For all of their exploits, each faltered for an instant in the second period.

Dunham was first, waving at Johnson’s goal, which came after Bob Corkum won a faceoff against the Predators’ Randy Robitaille.

Johnson got the puck and Kelly Buchberger screened Dunham for the goal at 3:34.

Yachmenev’s goal came at 12:36 while Passmore was trying to deal with traffic.

“I looked up and saw two of their players,” Passmore said. “I knew if I stayed in the net, I was a sitting duck.”

So he went out and tried to poke the puck away. Instead, David Legwand poked it to Yachmenev, who filled an empty net.

“Maybe I should have stayed back and tried to play the two-on-none,” Passmore said. “This is an easy game afterward.”

Nothing was easy from there on for the Kings, who were in first game of a four-game trip.

Robitaille, Belanger and Palffy had opportunities against Dunham, but each time the puck hopped over their sticks.

“The ice was horrible,” said Robitaille, who was questionable because of flu as late as Tuesday afternoon.

Blake was absent because of a back injury, but there were opportunities aplenty on four King power plays. It was only the second time that they failed to score in a game with a man advantage.

Nashville played the final 1:06 of overtime on the power play.

“We want them all,” said Coach Andy Murray of the idea that this was a game his team needed, because the rest of the trip winds through St. Louis and Dallas.

“We don’t put any more emphasis on one game than another.”

Maybe, but this is a game the Kings could have had.

So could Nashville.

The goalies made sure of it.