Win-Win Situation

Drama? You want drama? The Kings have become the kings of playoff thrillers--and the best may still be to come.

Glen Murray’s slap shot from the right wing 2:41 into the second overtime Sunday gave the Kings a 1-0 victory over the Colorado Avalanche and tied their second-round playoff series at three games each.

Murray accelerated through center ice and teed up a puck that was rolling on its edge. His blast caught the inside of Patrick Roy’s right leg before squirting into the net, setting off an avalanche of pompoms thrown onto the ice by the 18,478 fans at a rocking Staples Center.

“It was near the end of a shift, so I said, ‘I better shoot this and get off [the ice],’ ” Murray said. “I knew if I stayed on and gave it up, I’d be in deep trouble. I knew it was rolling and it kind of dipped and hit the inside of his leg and kind of squeezed through. . . . It’s wild, I guess. Being down three games to one is a tough situation, especially against Colorado, but we believe.”

The series will be decided Wednesday at the Pepsi Center in Denver, with the winner advancing to the Western Conference finals next weekend against the St. Louis Blues. The seventh-seeded Kings trailed the top-seeded Avalanche in the series, 3-1, just as they trailed the Detroit Red Wings in their first-round series, 2-0, before rallying to win in six games.

“Game 7? Who could ask for more?” Adam Deadmarsh said. “This is a big chance for us to knock the Avalanche out. That would be a great story for our team.”

King goaltender Felix Potvin stopped 33 shots to record his second successive shutout, the second time in his career he has recorded two playoff shutouts in a row. The last time was April 26-28 1994, when he was with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He won Game 6 by the same 1-0 score.

The Kings, who have advanced past the second round of the playoffs only once in their 34-season history, have seven playoff victories this spring, all by one goal and four in overtime. They have never had a goalie blank an opponent twice in a row in the playoffs.

The Avalanche had been 4-0 on the road before Sunday’s loss.

“We worked all year to get home-ice advantage, so it’s up to us to take advantage of that,” Colorado Coach Bob Hartley said.

The first period was scoreless, but it was hardly boring. Both goalies had some misadventures handling the puck and both made several acrobatic saves. The Kings outshot the Avalanche, 7-6, but Colorado had a power play that carried over to the second period.

Potvin was tested twice by Stephane Yelle on two quick shots before the game was 30 seconds old, but he withstood the challenge. Roy was challenged, too, coming out to the lower rim of the right faceoff circle and sinking to his knees to stop a shot by Adam Deadmarsh at 3:46.

Colorado gained its first power play when Aaron Miller was sent off for cross-checking at 14:15, but the power play vanished 65 seconds later, when Peter Forsberg was penalized for holding the stick of King defenseman Mattias Norstrom. When Miller came out of the box and the Kings had the advantage, they created a dangerous scoring chance: Ziggy Palffy threw the puck to the front of the net, where Jozef Stumpel’s attempt to redirect it into the net was stopped point-blank by Roy.

King defenseman Mathieu Schneider, who has had an impressive series, continued his stellar play by breaking up a two-on-one when Forsberg came out of the box.

Forsberg was dashing up the left side, with Dave Reid to his right, but Schneider flung himself to the ice to block the pass and prevent the Avalanche from threatening.

Colorado Coach Bob Hartley continued to give veteran defensemen Ray Bourque and Adam Foote immense amounts of ice time. Hartley sent the duo out every other shift, and each played 15 shifts. Foote played 10 minutes, 13 seconds, and Bourque played nine minutes, 22 seconds. Rob Blake, who played with Greg DeVries on some shifts and Jon Klemm on others, played nine minutes, 32 seconds.

The game remained scoreless after 40 minutes, but not because of a dearth of scoring chances. The Kings had three power plays in the period but couldn’t break through, leaving them 0 for 4 with a man advantage. They outshot the Avalanche, 12-10, for a 19-16 edge after two periods.

The third period was more of the same: thunderous checks, acrobatic saves and a tremendous battle of wills. As if the situation weren’t dramatic enough unembellished, the Kings got a penalty for having too many men on the ice with 46.3 seconds left in the third period--but the Avalanche took a penalty with 5.5 seconds left, when Bourque was caught taking the legs out from under Palffy and was sent off for tripping.

The Kings had a power play at 5:42 of the third period when Greg DeVries was penalized for hooking Ian Laperriere around the neck. They managed only one shot, squandering their fifth advantage of the game.

Roy made a point-blank save on Eric Belanger a bit past the eight-minute mark, and Potvin matched that by keeping his body in front of a backhander by Milan Hejduk at 9:34.

Through 60 minutes, Roy had 26 saves, two more than Potvin.

The crowd gasped when the Kings were penalized for too many men on the ice, because both teams had been sloppy on line changes most of the evening but had been given a lot of slack by referees Kerry Fraser and Mark Faucette.

However, this call was unavoidable, because Belanger played the puck as he was peeling off and heading for the bench and another King player had already stepped onto the ice.

The Avalanche geared up for a final push and came close to ending the game on a blast by Blake, but Potvin kicked the shot away.