Kings Stay Within Reach of Playoffs

Capitalizing on a favorable schedule that keeps them near home for almost all of March, the Kings continued their late playoff push Thursday with a 4-1 victory over the Nashville Predators.

They can only hope this 6-1-1 surge hasn’t come too late.

Philippe Boucher, Lubomir Visnovsky, Ian Laperriere and Glen Murray each scored goals as the Kings pulled away from the hard-working Predators by scoring once in the second period and once in the third. Felix Potvin earned his 199th career victory and improved his record as a King to 6-2-1-0, before an appreciative Staples Center crowd announced as 14,856.

The victory--the Kings’ fourth in a row at home--moved them within three points of the Edmonton Oilers in the chase for the last Western Conference playoff berth. However, the Oilers have a game in hand and will play that game today at Buffalo. The Kings also kept pace with the seventh-place Phoenix Coyotes, who defeated the Vancouver Canucks.

“It’s nice,” Potvin said, “even though we don’t have any help from any other teams, we keep winning. It’s a lot of fun.”

The Predators’ playoff hopes nearly were extinguished by the loss, which left them 11 points behind the Oilers with 13 games to play. The Kings have 14 games left.

“I think we’re playing a kind of game we need to play right now with our team the way it is,” Coach Andy Murray said. “We just have played a better team game. It was a no-choice situation after Rob [Blake] was traded. We thought, ‘We’d better dig in.’ ”

Each team capitalized on its first power play, but the Kings were able to manufacture a five-on-five goal too, giving them a 2-1 lead after the first period.

The Kings struck first, 40 seconds after Cale Hulse was penalized for highsticking. Their power-play unit of Luc Robitaille, Bryan Smolinski, Ziggy Palffy, Visnovsky and Boucher moved the puck crisply around the Predators’ zone until Robitaille, deep on the right side of the slot, passed the puck back toward the blue line to Boucher, whose bouncer went between Mike Dunham’s pads at 1:54.

The Predators responded at 6:31, one second before the end of a hooking penalty on Smolinski. Potvin saved Drake Berehowsky’s shot but the rebound skidded in front of the net and to Patric Kjellberg, who beat King defenseman Aaron Miller to the puck and swatted it past Potvin.

Merely 14 seconds later, Visnovsky unleashed a shot from the blue line that appeared to deflect downward before it eluded Dunham, who is likely to be the U.S. Olympic goalie next year at Salt Lake City. It was the seventh goal for Visnovsky, who has ranked among the top rookie scorers most of the season.

Potvin was tested early in the second period during a power play Nashville gained when Stu Grimson took a needless crosschecking penalty. The Predators, who are small but skillful, used those skills well when Cliff Ronning faked a shot from the blue line but instead sent a pass to former King Vitali Yachmenev, who had stationed himself by the right post. The puck got to Yachmenev about waist-high and he batted at it, but Potvin kept his body in front of the puck and blocked it.

Laperriere, whose work ethic compensates for his lack of finesse, showed a nice touch on the Kings third goal. He lugged the puck up ice before taking a blistering shot from the left circle that deflected off a Nashville player, and the crowd responded warmly when the red light went on at 18:06. The goal was Laperriere’s first in 17 games, since Jan. 30 against Dallas. Potvin was credited with an assist, his first point as a King.

“It was a 2-1 game and they were doing good,” Laperriere said. “That kind of slowed them down a little bit.”

Murray capped the scoring at 12:34, with a power-play goal. Visnovsky took the initial shot, which caromed off Nashville defenseman Karlis Skrastins and onto the blade of Murray’s stick. He had almost half the net in which to score his 16th goal.

Andy Murray said he can’t afford to worry about whether his team has started its playoff push too late.

“When it’s done, then I’ll have time to sit back and reflect and say, ‘What if?’ ” he said. “There’s no time for that. We can still do something about it. . . . Let’s play as hard as we can and see where we are at the end.”