Five-on-Five Needs a Special Touch

The Kings’ special teams continued their sparkling play Saturday night, contributing two late goals in a 3-0 victory over the New York Islanders at Uniondale, N.Y.

After Bryan Smolinski scored a power-play goal with 7:23 to play and Eric Belanger scored a short-handed, empty-net goal with 2:03 remaining, the Kings’ power-play and penalty-killing units have outscored opponents, 40-25.

At even strength, however, the Kings have been outscored, 69-62.

“Our problem has been our five-on-five play,” Coach Andy Murray said. “We’ve talked about that, the things we need to do: the communication that we need to have; making better decisions with the puck; eliminating turnovers at the offensive blue line; having our defensemen make that good first pass so they don’t put themselves in trouble in our zone; and certainly competing as hard as we possibly can.

“We’ve got some guys that have some pretty good offensive numbers and yet their plus-minus is not at the level we’d like to have it. So we asked our players to step it up. We know we’re going to be good on special teams. We have to be better five on five.”

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The Kings’ victory over the Islanders was their first in 10 games in which Jason Allison has not made a measurable contribution. They are 1-7-1-1 when he does not score a point.... Felix Potvin made 28 saves against the Islanders after making 29 in Wednesday night’s 3-1 victory over the Florida Panthers. His season high is 30.

TONIGHT

at New Jersey, 4:30 PST, Fox Sports Net

Site--Continental Airlines Arena.

Radio--KSPN (1110).

Records--Kings 16-16-7-2, Devils 18-15-5-2.

Record vs. Devils (2000-01)--1-1.

Update--If the Kings are to accumulate 93 points, which Murray says they’ll need to reach the playoffs, they’ll have to win the equivalent of 26 of their last 41 games.