Huet Displays a Savoir Faire in the Clutch

With Tuesday night’s game and their playoff hopes in danger of slipping away, the Kings turned over their goaltending duties to a 27-year-old Frenchman who before Thursday had never played in the NHL.

Firing away at Cristobal Huet would be Mario Lemieux, the ageless NHL scoring leader, and the rest of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who already had scored two consecutive goals in 15 1/2 minutes against Jamie Storr.

“I think if we would have let down on him,” King forward Bryan Smolinski said later of the greenhorn, “it would have been a disaster.”

The Kings, though, scored four consecutive goals before Lemieux finally beat Huet midway through the third period, then scored another only 34 seconds later to wrap up a 5-3 victory in front of 11,736 at Mellon Arena.

Huet, believed to be only the second Frenchman and the first French goaltender to play in the NHL, was equal to the formidable task. Of the 16 shots he turned away, three were from Lemieux, who scored two goals and assisted on a third.

“To play against Mario Lemieux, that’s unbelievable,” he said.

Almost equally unbelievable, or so it seemed at the time, was King Coach Andy Murray giving up on Storr so early in the game.

He had pulled Storr after the first period of Thursday night’s 5-0 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers, hoping to spark a rally from a 2-0 deficit and to rest his top goaltender for the next night’s game against the Buffalo Sabres.

But this was different.

“We’ve got to make a statement,” Murray said. “We’re not going to accept any player not getting the job done for us.

“So to me it wasn’t a great move, it was the only move.”

Smolinski and Ziggy Palffy each scored two goals and Palffy also had two assists to help Huet to his first NHL victory in only his second appearance. Palffy has scored 15 goals in 18 games, Smolinski nine in 13. And, since acquiring them from the New York Islanders in 1999, the Kings are 15-0-2 when both score.

Defenseman Jaroslav Modry, ending a 31-game goal drought, also scored for the Kings, who moved to within five points of the eighth-place Edmonton Oilers in the West, inching into ninth place ahead of the Chicago Blackhawks.

Huet, though, was the story.

“I thought I was OK,” he said, lauding his teammates. “When I went in, they really shut the door. I don’t have much experience, so they played really hard for me.”

A French Olympian in last year’s Salt Lake City Games, Huet played the last four seasons in Switzerland. Mostly on the recommendation of Jim Koleff, his coach in Switzerland and a good friend of Murray’s, he was drafted by the Kings in the ninth round of the NHL draft two years ago.

After his contract with Lugano of the Swiss league expired after last season, the Kings offered him a contract “and I decided to take my chances.”

He was called up from the minors last month after Felix Potvin suffered a knee injury, was sent back down and recalled again last week.

“He works hard in practice,” Smolinski said. “We shoot hard at him and it paid off because he played great tonight. He was the reason we sneaked out of here.”

Only Lemieux solved him.

“I thought he made some good saves, kept the puck in front of him,” Murray said. “The goal they got on him was by a pretty good player.”