Kings for Another Day

Their season had come down to 20 minutes, to one mistake. Yet, the Kings were upbeat as they left the ice after the second period Friday at the Pepsi Center, sure they held the upper hand even though they were locked in a scoreless stalemate with the Colorado Avalanche.

“It was positive thinking for us,” winger Ziggy Palffy said. “We had nothing to lose besides the game and besides the series.”

Right. Just those inconsequential little things.

“We’ve been in this position and battled hard, and if you battle hard something good is going to happen,” Palffy said after Luc Robitaille’s goal at 10:05 of the final period, set up on a faceoff victory and second-effort pass by Eric Belanger, gave the Kings a 1-0 victory that narrowed the Avalanche’s lead in their second-round NHL series to 3-2.

“This was teamwork, all the guys in here,” Palffy added. “Not just Lucky [Robitaille]. Now it’s in our hands.”

Colorado can still advance to the Western Conference finals against the St. Louis Blues with a victory Sunday at Staples Center, where it won Games 3 and 4. And a seventh game, if necessary, would be in Denver on Wednesday. But the Kings were happy and satisfied Friday because they played their most complete game of the series--and, perhaps, of the playoffs.

Goaltender Felix Potvin, starting his 34th consecutive game, made 20 saves to record his sixth career playoff shutout and send a capacity crowd of 18,007 home deflated. Potvin was beaten once, at 12:33 of the second period, but Milan Hejduk batted in Ville Nieminen’s pass with his stick well above the height of the crossbar and the goal was waved off after it was reviewed by video goal judges Don Adam and Bill Boyce.

“We knew it wasn’t a goal,” King Coach Andy Murray said. “We thought for a second they weren’t going to check.”

The Kings checked even better. They held Peter Forsberg scoreless for the first time in this series and first time in Colorado’s nine playoff games, reconfiguring their defense pairings to pit Mattias Norstrom and Aaron Miller against the muscular Swede. The duo had played together late in the season and were more successful Friday than Norstrom and Jere Karalahti had been.

“We felt after two [periods] that we were getting better chances and it was a matter of time before we scored,” defenseman Mathieu Schneider said. “Felix was playing great and that’s all you can ask for on the road, to be in a 0-0 game.

“Whatever it took, that’s what we were going to do. If it was going to take overtime, we were ready. We talked about winning a 1-0 game, that we’d have to clog up the neutral zone. Matty and Aaron did a great job against Forsberg’s line and the rest of the guys really stepped up.”

None took a bigger step than Robitaille, who on Friday tied Dave Taylor’s club record by playing his 92nd playoff game as a King.

Held to one goal in the previous four games, Robitaille had been cited by Murray as one of the big guns who had to produce if the Kings were to avoid playoff elimination. Murray juggled his lines to find combinations that would produce a more energetic forecheck and generate more scoring chances, and for the faceoff to Patrick Roy’s left nearly midway through the third period, he sent Robitaille out with Belanger and Adam Deadmarsh.

Belanger, who this season led NHL rookies by winning 57% of his faceoffs, faced off against Chris Drury. Belanger, who shoots left-handed, wanted to draw the puck back to the point against Drury, a right-hander. Belanger won the duel, but the puck didn’t go far.

“The puck bounced,” Belanger said. “I turned and the defenseman [Ray Bourque] was trying to play the puck and me. I knew Luc was there.”

Robitaille knew what to do: head for the net and aim for the inviting gap between Roy’s pads.

“As soon as I saw he was going to get the puck, I knew he was going to pass to me,” Robitaille said of Belanger. “I stopped in the middle and I saw the five hole. There was no hesitation. That thing was going in.”

When it did, it ended a scoreless streak of 110 minutes 45 seconds for the Kings against Roy and the Avalanche, and was their first even-strength goal since their third goal in their 4-3 overtime victory in Game 1.

“I don’t know if that was their best game, but it was our worst game,” Colorado winger Alex Tanguay said. “It was our worst by far, but we’ve got to put it behind us. We gave this one away. They played really well, but I don’t think we played our game.”

The Kings’ game is nerve-racking. All six of their playoff victories have been by one goal, including three in overtime, but they stayed on the right side of that precarious line Friday.

“We’ve been desperate a lot in these playoffs,” Deadmarsh said. “We’ve been in some tight games. You’ve got to win those tight ones.”

In prolonging the series, Murray got his wish to return to Staples Center for at least one more game. “We would prefer that in Game 6 in L.A. we had a chance to close out the series ourselves, but we’ll take it,” he said.

Said Schneider: “We played a solid 60 minutes, and that’s what it takes to beat this club. Probably anything less is not going to do it. We’re learning a lot about ourselves throughout the playoffs, and we want to keep on learning.”

For expanded coverage of the King-Avalanche series, including photo galleries and live updates, please visit the Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/nhlplayoffs

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DOMI IS DONE

Toronto’s Tie Domi is suspended for rest of playoffs for hit on New Jersey’s Scott Niedermayer. D8