Kings Outlast Islanders

The Kings know there are going to be nights like this. They can only hope to survive them relatively unscathed, as they did Tuesday.

At the finish, the Kings had two points after an uneven performance in a 4-2 victory over the New York Islanders.

The announced 14,394 in Staples Center had seen this act before. A spotty performance against a lesser opponent, a couple of soft goals, all trademarks of last season’s collapse.

Only this time the Kings won.

Brent Sopel ended a 2-2 tie with a goal on a one-timer with 5.3 seconds left in the second period and the Kings gritted out the third period, getting an insurance goal by Alexander Frolov with 17 seconds left.

Michael Cammalleri and Tom Kostopoulos scored goals and 19-year old Anze Kopitar assisted on Frolov’s goal to extend his start-of-career scoring streak to three games.

“It was a weird game,” defenseman Aaron Miller said. “It wasn’t our best 60 minutes, we would have liked to put it away a little sooner, but we came out with a victory.”

This was hardly the Beast from the East, more like a domesticated pet, one certainly capable of rolling over and playing dead as the Islanders did on opening night in a 6-3 loss to the Phoenix Coyotes.

How the Islanders spent their summer vacation was a little different than most teams.

They hired Neil Smith as general manager, then fired him 40 days later, replacing him with Garth Snow, their backup goaltender last season, whose has two years left on his playing contract, which counts against the team’s salary cap.

They brought Ted Nolan, who hadn’t spent a day in the NHL since the 1996-97 season, in as coach, and signed goaltender Rick DiPietro to a 15-year contract.

Yet the Kings couldn’t shake them, finally taking the lead on Sopel’s power-play goal.

“The way the league is now, with all the power plays, every team has a chance every night,” Kings goaltender Dan Cloutier said.

Sopel scored only two goals in 57 games with the Islanders last season before being traded to the Kings and showing up with a cracked kneecap that limited him in the 11 games he played after the deal.

“It was a terrible year there,” Sopel said. “I wanted to show the Kings organization and the fans that there was a reason why they traded for me.”

Sopel matched his goal total from last season, when he lined up an Oleg Tverdovsky pass for a one-timer and a power-play goal to break a 2-2 tie.

“Oh yeah, I got all of that,” Sopel said.

It helped get Cloutier off the hook after a first period he’d rather forget.

Richard Park managed to slip the puck between Cloutier and the post 1:16 into the game, the second time in as many starts that has happened.

Cloutier finished the period by having Alexei Yashin’s blue-line blast go off his pads and roll into the net, tying the score, 2-2, with 38 seconds left.

“The first one hit me in the ribs and, if you’re against the post, there is only one place it will go, in the net,” said Cloutier, who stopped 18 shots after Yashin’s goal.

“The second one was a rolling puck. Give the guys credit, they didn’t let those affect them.”

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Center Alyn McCaully, a free agent signing over the summer, underwent arthroscopic knee surgery to remove floating cartilage Monday and will be unable to skate for a week, Crawford said.

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chris.foster@latimes.com