Potvin Is All Kings Need

The Kings picked an opportune time to post their first shutout, opening a five-game trip Saturday night with a 3-0 victory against the New York Islanders in front of a sellout crowd of 16,234 at Nassau Coliseum.

The Kings climbed to .500 at 16-16-7-2 as they reached the halfway point in their season, but before Felix Potvin stopped 28 shots to prevent the Islanders from scoring, they were the only team in the NHL without a shutout.

Locked in an often spectacular duel with Islander goaltender Chris Osgood for nearly 21/2 periods, Potvin was the beneficiary of two third-period goals by Eric Belanger and one by Bryan Smolinski in his first regular-season shutout since March 31, when he blanked the Colorado Avalanche, 4-0.

Potvin was especially brilliant in the first period, when the Kings showed the energy-sapping effects of flying across the country on Friday and then busing through the Long Island rush hour from the Newark, N.J., airport.

“Unbelievable,” Belanger said of Potvin, who made half his saves in the first 20 minutes. “He kept us in the game in the first period.

“Without him, I don’t think we would have won the game.”

Outshot in the first period, 14-7, the Kings bounced back strong in the second to outshoot the Islanders, 11-2, but all they had to show for it was a scoreless tie as Osgood matched Potvin almost save for save.

About 41/2 minutes into the third period, during a King power play, Osgood made another spectacular save on a point-blank shot by Ziggy Palffy.

“Miraculous,” an impressed King Coach Andy Murray called it.

The Kings, however, kept the pressure on. They finally scored with 11:57 to play after defenseman Mattias Norstrom, momentarily assuming the role of a winger as he emerged from the penalty box, picked up the puck in the King zone, carried it across the neutral zone and fed a pass to Belanger in the right circle.

With Norstrom and Ian Laperriere taking the defenders with them as they charged the net, Belanger carried the puck back across the slot and whistled a shot from the left faceoff circle that caught Osgood leaning the wrong way.

It caught the inside of the right post and caromed into the net.

“I kept the puck and was patient with it and everything opened up in front of me,” Belanger said. “I’d had so many chances earlier in the game that I said, ‘I’ve got to put this one in.’ I just wanted to throw it at the net.

“I tried, like, three shots off the glove [earlier] and he robbed me a couple times. This one, I kept it lower, so I was happy with that shot.”

So were the Kings, who finally had some breathing room.

Smolinski gave them a little more when he scored a power-play goal on a shot from the left point with 7:23 to play, making the score 2-0.

Belanger and Smolinski then combined on a short-handed empty-net goal with 2:03 remaining, Belanger starting a two-on-one rush when he picked up the puck after the Islanders’ Shawn Bates fanned on a shot from the right point.

Belanger fed it ahead to Smolinski, who gave it back to him for a shot from the right circle that gave Belanger his eighth goal.

“There were so many good things in that game for us,” said Murray, whose team reached the halfway point last season with a 17-16-7-1 record. “We scored a power-play goal when we needed it. We scored a short-handed goal.” And, of course, they got a great performance from Potvin.

“Our goalie gave us a chance in the first period to get our legs,” Murray said. “We were kind of flat, which I would attribute to the trip because we showed what we could do once we got our legs under us.

“I thought we played very good over the last 40 minutes.”

Potvin gave it a full 60 in posting his sixth shutout in 56 starts for the Kings since the trade last February that brought him from Vancouver.

It mattered little to him that he’d gone so long between shutouts.

“I’ve never been a guy that’s had a lot of shutouts,” he said. “I only have 20 out of 550 [actually 527] games. I don’t really worry about shutouts. I think shutouts don’t mean anything unless it’s a 1-0 game. It was just fun to win.

“That’s our main goal: to win.”