Kings Pay High Price in Win

King Coach Andy Murray called it vicious. Brad Chartrand, watching from the bench, said there was “definitely a big sound to it.”

It may have been the sound of the Kings’ season exploding.

A violent knee-on-knee collision between Jason Allison of the Kings and Andy Sutton of the Atlanta Thrashers on Tuesday night may have resulted in a season-ending knee injury for Allison.

The Kings would say only that their scoring leader had suffered a sprained right knee, but their long faces after a 4-0 victory in front of an announced crowd of 11,440 at Philips Arena told a different, more troubling story.

Allison had little to say, offering only that he knew right away that he had been badly injured, as he made his way on crutches out of the trainer’s room, down a hallway and onto the team bus about 30 minutes after the game.

His right leg had been immobilized in a large blue brace.

“A lot of pain,” he mumbled.

Allison had been carrying the puck up the right side of the ice near the red line midway through the first period, during the second of the Kings’ 12 power plays, when he tried to sidestep Sutton, a 6-foot-6, 245-pound defenseman.

“I thought I was by him,” he said.

Sutton, however, seemed to stick his leg out as the 6-3, 215-pound Allison tried to get past him to the inside. Their right knees slammed together.

Allison fell to the ice, grimacing and clutching his knee.

Helped off the ice, he spent the rest of game in the dressing room. He flew with the Kings to Chicago, where they’ll wrap up a five-game trip Thursday night, but was scheduled to fly home to Los Angeles today for further tests.

“It’s serious,” Murray said. “It’s very serious.”

Already playing without injured regulars Aaron Miller and Ziggy Palffy, the Kings soldiered on and overwhelmed the winless Thrashers.

Defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky had three points, among them two goals, and Mikko Eloranta also scored two goals as the Kings extended the Thrashers’ winless streak to 18 games. The Thrashers, who last won on March 23, ended last season with a nine-game winless streak and are 0-8-0-1 this season.

Visnovsky and Eloranta scored in the last 46 seconds of the first period, Eloranta on the deflection of a shot by Visnovsky.

Visnovsky scored his second goal in the second period and Eloranta scored again in the third.

Goaltender Felix Potvin stopped 25 shots for his first save.

Allison’s injury, however, overshadowed everything else.

“A coach’s nightmare,” teammate Bryan Smolinski called it.

The rugged, durable center has played in 82 consecutive games since the Kings acquired him last season in a trade with the Boston Bruins.

He led the club with 74 points in 73 games last season and has 11 in nine games this season.

“You’ve really got to hurt him for him not to get up and physically get off the ice,” said Chartrand, a teammate.

Murray was angry that Sutton had not been penalized for the play and angrier still at the referees’ explanation for not sending him off.

“My concern is that two officials on the ice both came to me and said it was a great shoulder check,” he said. “It’s the responsibility of the referees to make that call. And for them to tell us, in their words, it was a great shoulder check?

“A star player in the NHL could be out for two months. I think it’s important that the league steps in and holds their guys accountable.”

None of the Kings suggested that Sutton had intended to injure Allison, but that didn’t stop Ian Laperriere from picking a fight as Sutton left the penalty box later in the first period, resulting in 17 minutes worth of penalties for Laperriere.

“It was an accident,” King captain Mattias Norstrom said.

Said Sutton: “I am sorry that Jason Allison was injured, but that is part of the game and I am a little more concerned right now about the loss.”

The Kings, of course, had greater worries, but they put up a brave front. They’ve been down this road before, playing long stretches last season without Palffy and defenseman Mathieu Schneider but surviving to make the playoffs.

Their thoughts were with Allison.

“It doesn’t look good,” Schneider said.