Once Again, Kings on Thin Ice

The end is near.

The Kings are finished.

Over the last year and a half, the Kings have heard those words more times than they’d care to count.

Each time, their response has been, in effect, “Says who?”

Last season, struggling to stay above .500 before making two key late-season trades, they vaulted into the playoffs on the strength of a 13-2-5-2 finish.

Once there, they defied long odds by rallying from a 2-0 deficit to eliminate the Detroit Red Wings in a stunning first-round upset. In the second round, they climbed out of a 3-1 hole against the Colorado Avalanche, nearly derailing the Avalanche’s Stanley Cup championship run before losing in Game 7.

This season, all but left for dead and publicly ridiculed by their coach after a 5-11-1-2 start left them near the bottom of the Western Conference, they pieced together the NHL’s best record over the last four months of the season.

Again losing the first two games of their first-round playoff series, this time against the Avalanche, they responded with a 3-1 victory in Game 3 on Monday.

But after being shut out Tuesday night in Game 4 by Colorado goaltender Patrick Roy, 1-0, they find themselves in a familiar position as they prepare for Game 5 tonight in the Pepsi Center.

On the brink of elimination.

Only 16 of the 186 teams that have lost three of the first four games of a best-of-seven NHL playoff series, or 8.6%, have rallied to win the series, though the odds have improved over the last 15 years, with 14 of 102 going on to win. One was the Kings, who in Wayne Gretzky’s first season with the club eliminated his former team, the Edmonton Oilers, after trailing, 3-1, in a first-round series in 1989.

The Kings, though, played Game 5 that year at the Forum.

This team, a terror on the road for months, is 0-7-1 away from Staples Center since March 18, when it defeated the San Jose Sharks, 3-2, at San Jose, and will play tonight without one of its top six forwards, possibly two.

Cliff Ronning, suffering from a possible concussion, did not make the trip after sitting out Tuesday night’s game, and Adam Deadmarsh is questionable after suffering a strained neck Tuesday night while diving into the end boards trying to make a third-period hit on Avalanche defenseman Adam Foote.

The Avalanche, meanwhile, has won six of seven series after building a 3-1 lead, losing only to the Oilers in 1998. Coach Bob Hartley’s team has won its last three games against the Kings in the Pepsi Center and four of five.

Still, the Kings are hopeful.

“We have played our best hockey when we are against the wall,” defenseman Mathieu Schneider said Wednesday in El Segundo before the Kings departed for Colorado. “I don’t think this is going to be an exception.

“We’re going to go out and put our best game on the ice. I don’t think there is any doubt in anyone’s mind that we’re capable of beating this team.”

The Kings won Game 5 last year at Denver, 1-0, behind goaltender Felix Potvin. Also, before their late-season slide, they had earned points in 22 of 26 road games from mid-November through their victory last month at San Jose.

“The way I look at it is, we turned our season around in December by going on the road and winning,” Coach Andy Murray said. “My positive outlook on things is, we’re going to turn this playoff series around by going into Denver and winning on the road. I think there’s a comparison and that’s what I like to draw on.

“It’s much easier to draw on the scenarios you like to paint than the ones that could be painted for you. I have to look at it that way. It’s my job.”

But winning in the Pepsi Center against the defending champions won’t be easy, especially if two key players are out of the lineup.

“They have great fans and great chemistry in their building,” Schneider said. “We have to overcome that. At times, it can be like we’re playing six guys on the ice. But we should have won at least one of the last two in there....

“It doesn’t matter where we’re playing right now. They probably feel an advantage going home. But there has to be something in the back of their minds remembering last season, when we went in there and beat them. I think they know we could have won any of these games. It has to be in their heads right now.”

If not, it’s in the Kings’.

But will that be enough?

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Staff writer Chris Foster contributed to this story.

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*--* Long Road Back The Kings battled back from a 3-1 series deficit to eventual Stanley Cup champion Colorado in the Western Conference semifinals last year only to lose Game 7 on the road, 5-1. The Kings were successful in recovering from a 3-1 series deficit once, in the 1989 divisional semifinals against Edmonton. Calgary swept the Kings in the divisional finals. The Edmonton series: Game 1 Edmonton 4, at Kings 3 Game 2 at Kings 5, Edmonton 2 Game 3 at Edmonton 4, Kings 0 Game 4 at Edmonton 4, Kings 3 Game 5 at Kings 4, Edmonton 2 Game 6 Kings 4, at Edmonton 1 Game 7 at Kings 6, Edmonton 3

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