Kings Build Confidence on Road to Another Win

The special teams were special, which is one reason the Kings weren’t all that worried Saturday when they fell a goal behind in the opening period.

Only one goal?

Two periods to play?

So what?

On the road?

No problem.

At least not lately. A rally from a four-goal deficit at Ottawa on Tuesday night showed that.

“We’re always going to score goals,” said winger Ziggy Palffy after he scored twice in the Kings’ 6-3 victory over Carolina at the half-full Entertainment and Sports Arena on a rainy afternoon.

The crowd to watch Carolina’s unbeaten streak end at nine games (7-0-2) was announced at 13,009, an exaggeration to say the least.

The Kings kept their minds on their mission.

“It’s more a matter of who is going to play defense,” Palffy said.

In this case, everybody did once the Kings fell behind, 2-1, after the second of Jeff O’Neill’s two goals trumped Palffy’s first one, scored only 1:57 into the game.

“It’s not often that we get held to one goal in a game, so you have to believe that if you reduce the scoring chances at the other end of the ice, that you’re eventually going to get some opportunities,” Coach Andy Murray said.

When you have the highest-scoring team in the NHL, you can say that. When you’ve been limited to one goal or fewer only eight times in 47 games, only two in your last 20, people believe it.

The law of averages didn’t hurt either.

“If you [are unbeaten in] nine in a row, you know something is going to happen,” Palffy reasoned about the Kings’ chances against Hurricanes. “A bad bounce, something. Every goaltender is going to give up goals.”

That’s why it was no surprise when Rob Blake scored at 12:37 of the second period on a five-on-three power-play advantage, and when Steve Reinprecht scored a short-handed goal 3:42 later to give the Kings a 3-2 lead that they never relinquished.

“We got ourselves in a position where we were in a little trouble because we took a penalty and went down two men, and that’s the wrong team to be down two men on,” Carolina Coach Paul Maurice said. “We turned over the puck twice, and it’s in the net.”

Blake’s goal came when he worked his way in close and blasted away at goalie Arturs Irbe, who started his 33rd consecutive game. The Hurricanes had killed their last 23 penalties to that point.

Reinprecht’s goal came when Irbe tried to take advantage of a King line switch and sent the puck up the boards to his right.

“I saw it going there, and I just went there,” Reinprecht said. “That’s just our system.”

Nelson Emerson and he then found themselves in a two-on-one advantage against Martin Gelinas, and Reinprecht got a return pass from Emerson and scored.

Another goal by Palffy and a third-period score by Smolinski made it 5-2, negating the impact of Dave Karpa’s power-play goal at 14:22 of the final period.

Emerson’s empty-net score provided the game’s final goal.

The Kings’ third victory in as many games on this trip--and their fifth in their last six games--have become part of the team’s building process.

“We won at Ottawa, where they had won five in a row,” Murray said. “And we won at Toronto, where they had played well. And we’ve won here, where they were unbeaten. That’s six points against some good teams, and we have one game left.”

That’s at Philadelphia on Monday night.

Memories were jogged in preparation for Saturday’s game.

“We remembered that last road trip, when we won the first two games [at St. Louis and Detroit] and then lost with four seconds to play at Detroit,” Blake said. “That’s a hard way to lose a game, and it took something out of us.”

They ended up losing their next two after that.

“We talked about that,” Blake said. “We didn’t want it to happen again.”