Thrashing Opponent Is Just What Kings Need

Good news for the Kings:

They’ve reached .500.

For the month, anyway.

Taking their first step toward shaking an early season malaise, the Kings dominated the Atlanta Thrashers on Saturday afternoon, ending a five-game losing streak with a 4-1 victory in front of 14,278 at Staples Center.

The Thrashers, a third-year expansion team, are one of the worst teams in the Eastern Conference, and the Kings seized the opportunity to get well.

“We needed to stop the bleeding,” said center Jason Allison, who was on the winning side for the first time since April, before his six-week contract holdout this fall and eventual trade to the Kings from the Boston Bruins on Oct. 24. “We’ve played well in a lot of games and still lost. Sometimes, you just need a win to kind of break that hex and get yourself feeling good about winning.

“It seems like when you’re losing games, no matter how well you’re playing, you find a way to lose them. When you’re winning games, even when you’re playing bad, you seem to find a way to win. Hopefully, we’ve switched that over.”

It would help if they played the Thrashers more than once this season.

The Kings held the visitors without a shot on goal in the first period, a feat they had accomplished only once previously in more than 34 seasons. The Kings had 14 shots on goal in the first and finished with a 38-16 advantage.

“We ... hit some kind of crazy funk,” Thrasher Coach Curt Fraser said. “We came out and everybody’s jumping, ready to go, before we get on the ice. Then we get out ... and it looks like we have never played hockey before.”

The last time the Kings held an opponent without a shot for an entire period was on April 5, 1978, in the second period against the St. Louis Blues. They lost, 3-2, at the Forum.

This time, they built a 2-0 lead on first-period goals by Randy Robitaille, his first with the Kings, and Steve Heinze, his sixth of the season.

In the third period, after the Thrashers had closed the gap to 2-1 on a second-period goal by Hnat Domenichelli, the Kings got two goals from Eric Belanger, among them an empty-netter that gave him the first multigoal game of his career.

“Time will tell,” Heinze said, “but hopefully this brings back our confidence that we can get a lead, hold a lead and play 60 minutes, no matter who we’re playing.”

During their five-game skid, the Kings were outscored, 17-7.

Defense was their priority against the Thrashers, who were playing the second game of a seven-game trip that continues tonight against the Mighty Ducks.

“That’s one of the things we practiced a lot in the last few days: playing our zone,” said Belanger, who had scored one goal in 14 games before Saturday. “If we take care of our own zone we know we have the skills up front to score some goals, and that’s what happened today.”

The first period set the tone.

“When you don’t give up any shots,” Belanger said, “your chances are good that you’re going to win the game.”

As bad as they are, the Thrashers weren’t going to make it through the game without a shot, of course. But by the time they got one, about two minutes into the second period, the Kings were in control.

The score might have been 3-0 at that point, but Robitaille had a second goal disallowed after a video review by the referees determined that he had slipped the puck past goaltender Milan Hnilicka a split-second after the period-ending buzzer.

“We needed a game like that,” said Belanger, asked about the Kings’ first-period dominance. “We were looking for a perfect game.”

Perfect or not, it was a vast improvement over what came before it: a forgettable October in which the Kings won three of 13 games and then Thursday night’s 3-2 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks, their eighth one-goal loss of the season.

“We’re climbing the ladder back to where we want to be,” Coach Andy Murray said. “That’s kind of the theme I discussed with the guys, that we take it one day at a time and start the climb.

“And it doesn’t matter whether it’s [over] the Colorado Avalanche or Atlanta. Atlanta has beaten a couple of good teams.”

Atlanta, though, is not to be confused with the Stanley Cup champion.

It showed that in the first period.