Kings' Season in the Balance

By HELENE ELLIOTT

May 4, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DENVER —

Their season has been a roller coaster of thrills and despair, of surges when they got strong goaltending and a productive power play, and dispiriting dips when they lost their confidence and their hold on a playoff spot.

Changing their roster and their character helped the Kings overcome adversity and upset the Detroit Red Wings in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Tonight at the Pepsi Center, they will try to climb one more peak and try to prevent the Colorado Avalanche from bringing their season to a grinding halt in Game 5 of the second round.

“We talked about every game being big the last 2 1/2 months,” defenseman Aaron Miller said, “but there’s none bigger than [today’s].”

Of the 183 teams that have faced 3-1 deficits in best-of-seven series, 16 have rallied to win. Luc Robitaille played on two, the 1994-95 Pittsburgh Penguins against the Washington Capitals, and the 1988-89 Kings against the Edmonton Oilers.

“The key is, you can’t look at it as you’ve got to win three games,” he said. “You’ve got to look at it as you’ve got to win [today].”

If the Kings win today, they will play Game 6 on Sunday night at Staples Center and hope to push the Avalanche to a seventh game Wednesday at Denver.

“There’ll be a game here Sunday,” King Coach Andy Murray said Thursday before the team’s charter flight departed for Denver, where it snowed Thursday.

“I firmly believe that. I have to. They already sold the tickets. . . . We’ve got players that have not played well. I always think every one of our players is going to play his best game every game. You never achieve that, but you’re always looking for that.”

Said defenseman Mathieu Schneider: “You look at the way this team has responded throughout the season. There’s no quit in us.

“A lot of people counted us out in February and March, and we battled our way into the playoffs. A lot of people didn’t give us a chance to win the Detroit series, and we did [in six games]. A lot of people didn’t give us a chance to win one game in this series, but we did.”

Another loss, though, and the Kings will go home to ponder how far they must progress to match the speed, depth and resourcefulness of the Avalanche.

Since winning five consecutive playoff games, including the opener against Colorado at the Pepsi Center, the Kings have lost their last three, two at Staples Center. They have not scored an even-strength goal since the third goal in their 4-3 overtime triumph in Game 1, and they’ve been shut out twice by Patrick Roy in the last three.

Bryan Smolinski, Adam Deadmarsh and Jozef Stumpel have no goals in the series, and Ziggy Palffy, Robitaille, Nelson Emerson and Jaroslav Modry have one each. Glen Murray is the Kings’ top goal scorer with three, two in Game 1.

The role of King killer is familiar to Roy, who was voted the most valuable player in the 1993 playoffs after leading the Montreal Canadiens to a five-game victory over the Kings in the Stanley Cup finals. In that series too, Roy lost the opener--but Schneider was playing with him instead of against him.

“He’s made some great saves. He’s made the saves he had to,” said Schneider, the Kings’ top scorer in this series with five points, all on assists, and their top playoff scorer with nine points, all on assists. “A lot of pucks have hit him. I don’t think we’ve gotten the traffic in front of him that we’d like to and need to. The goaltending in this league is too good. If the goalie sees the puck, he’s going to make the saves.

“We haven’t gotten enough pucks in front. We’ve averaged a little more than 20 shots a game [22.8]. That’s not enough. There are times in the last couple of games we’ve been trying to make fancy passes instead of going to the net to try and get rebounds.”

There are no great secrets at this stage, nothing either team doesn’t know about the other.

The Kings know they must give a sustained effort tonight, no matter the early results. They swarmed Roy in the first period Wednesday with the help of three power plays but were blanked; they were outshot in the second period, 9-6, and in the last two periods, 18-11. They’ve been outscored 6-1 in the second period in the four games of this series, matched the Avalanche in the first period (2-2), trail by a cumulative 4-3 in third-period goals, and have outscored the Avalanche in overtime, 1-0.

“We’ve played great periods during the series but we haven’t played a great game,” Miller said. “We had a great first period [Wednesday] but for whatever reason, we didn’t come out as hard in the second period.”

The Avalanche is faster and deeper than the Red Wings, and core defensemen Ray Bourque, Adam Foote and former King Rob Blake play a more physical game than Detroit’s top defensemen.

And the Kings haven’t figured out how to stop Peter Forsberg, who has two goals and seven points in four games--as does linemate Milan Hejduk. Defensemen Mattias Norstrom and Jere Karalahti haven’t stopped Forsberg by hitting him, and Smolinski hasn’t been able to out-muscle or outsmart him.

Somehow, some way, they will have to find an answer tonight.

“I think you’re going to see the guys that really want it bad,” Miller said. “It’s that do-or-die situation, all the cliches.”

NHL PLAYOFFS

GAME 5 TONIGHT

KINGS at COLORADO

5, Fox Sports Net 2

Avalanche leads series, 3-1

SAKIC’S STATUS UNCLEAR

The Colorado center might sit out again tonight because of a shoulder injury suffered in Game 3. D12

PLAYOFF STATISTICS, D12

INSIDE

ST. LOUIS 4, DALLAS 1