The Point Is, Kings Are Happy With Effort

Descending upon a town in a tizzy this week, the Kings were asked repeatedly about the plight of the Toronto Maple Leafs, whose flurry of early-season losses has sunk them near the bottom in the Eastern Conference.

Their response: What do we care?

As the Kings showed Tuesday night in spotting the Maple Leafs an early three-goal advantage in a 4-3 overtime loss in front of a sellout crowd of 19,225 at the Air Canada Centre, they’ve got their own problems.

The loss was their fourth in five games and their fifth in seven, two in overtime, since scoring leader Jason Allison was sidelined last month.

Ziggy Palffy hasn’t scored a goal since the opener, goaltender Felix Potvin gave up three first-period goals for the second consecutive game and Allison, sidelined because of a knee injury, isn’t due back until late December at the earliest.

But the Kings, who boarded a 5 1/2-hour flight to Vancouver after the game, weren’t about to look unkindly on an overtime loss for which they gladly accepted a point in the standings by overcoming a 3-0 third-period deficit.

So what if Mats Sundin scored his second goal of the game 3 minutes 20 seconds into the extra period, giving the Maple Leafs the victory?

It meant little to the Kings.

“Absolutely nothing bittersweet about it at all,” Coach Andy Murray said. “We have to feel good about ourselves. I’m proud of our level of determination to come back. We were not playing a poor game when we were down, 3-0....

“And what we showed in the third period is an example to our team of what we’re capable of and how we have to play, so I want our players walking out of here and getting on that plane feeling good about themselves.”

With the exception of Potvin, who gave up three goals on only five shots in the first period and was pulled in favor of Jamie Storr after the second, they did.

“I think we showed a lot of fortitude coming back, a lot of courage,” defenseman Mathieu Schneider said. “It’s something that we haven’t had to do this year. The games we played well and won, we played with the lead for the most part, so I think this is a step in the right direction for us.”

The first period was a step into the recent past, the Kings digging themselves the same 3-0 hole they’d dug Saturday night in a 3-1 loss at Montreal.

After Sundin scored at 3:45 and Jonas Hoglund at 11:27, the Maple Leafs led, 2-0, after taking only two shots. When Tomas Kaberle scored on the Maple Leafs’ fifth shot at 18:52, a regulation loss for the Kings seemed almost inevitable.

“But it wasn’t like Montreal, where the effort wasn’t there,” Schneider said. “It was just a couple of mistakes that cost us. It was a much different situation.”

In the second period, Potvin stopped 13 shots and in the third, when the Kings’ own marksmanship improved, Storr stopped five.

Defenseman Jaroslav Modry’s sixth goal in seven games cut the deficit to 3-1 at 2:36 of the third period. Adam Deadmarsh scored his eighth goal at 7:39. Then, with Tom Fitzgerald of the Maple Leafs in the penalty box for obstruction holding, Deadmarsh scored his ninth, a power-play goal at 14:47.

The end of the period was greeted with boos from the crowd, which was in a much better mood after Sundin scored on a rebound of his own shot.

The Kings were OK with that.

“We want to get as many points as we can on the road,” said Schneider, looking ahead to four more games on this eight-game trip. “It’s been a tough schedule, but we came out in the third period and played the way we wanted to play.

“We were really on a full-court press that whole period. It’s a little riskier hockey, but you’re going to create more chances and that’s what happened for us.”