Kings Manage to Get Lost in a Sandstrom

Tomas Sandstrom was the watch fob, dangling in front of the Kings, mesmerizing them Monday night at the Great Western Forum.

Keep your eye on the right winger.

Now you see him. Now you don’t.

Now the puck is in the net.

Twice.

Now the Mighty Ducks have a 3-1 win over the Kings, who don’t have much time left to make up ground in the Western Conference playoff race.

The Ducks are another story. They have won six of their last seven games and have climbed to .500. Monday’s win, before 14,664, gave them an extra cushion over St. Louis and San Jose in their fifth-place position in the West. It’s two points now.

The break-even business isn’t keeping Duck Coach Craig Hartsburg up nights.

“[Playing] .500 is not a real focus for us,” he said. “We’re just trying to focus on the next game and the next two points.”

Monday’s two points came when Sandstrom fashioned a 1-1 tie with a breakaway goal on a Duck power play in the second period, then scored the game-winner on a penalty shot at 6:40 of the third.

Paul Kariya’s empty-net goal finished off the Kings.

The penalty shot was Sandstrom’s second ever. “He’s exactly the guy we needed there because of his experience,” Hartsburg said.

That penalty-shot experience came in 1990, when Sandstrom was a King and playing at Pittsburgh.

“Not very many of those guys are still here,” Sandstrom said, acknowledging no extra satisfaction in beating his former employer. “Maybe Luc [Robitaille] and Steve Duchesne.”

Duchesne was his victim on the play that became the penalty shot. Sandstrom got a step on him in the neutral zone and took a pass from Steve Rucchin. Duchesne’s recourse was to take Sandstrom down with his stick.

“It was a two-on-two, and I kind of lost Sandstrom behind me there,” Duchesne said. “I didn’t think he was behind me, actually. I probably should have kept an eye on him. I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t get a breakaway and he did. It was my fault.”

It gave the Ducks a 2-1 lead.

Anaheim gained a 1-1 tie in the second period, only 17 seconds after Olli Jokinen had scored a short-handed goal for the Kings.

Again, it was Sandstrom. Again, it was a breakaway.

“He was totally my guy,” said King defenseman Sean O’Donnell. “We had just made it 1-0, and I didn’t think the guy [Pascal Trepanier] could get the puck to him onside. He did, and I realized that I had made a pretty big mistake.”

In each case, King Coach Larry Robinson said, there was a mental error.

“You can do a lot of things, but you can’t make them concentrate,” Robinson said. “And if they can’t concentrate, maybe they don’t need to be here.”

The irony was that a pregame meeting had stressed just that. In an unusual twist, Robinson--who can hardly speak because of laryngitis--asked the players what they thought they needed to do to win.

O’Donnell and Ray Ferraro had the answers.

“We needed to get in other players’ faces,” said Ferraro, stressing checking. “We needed to get in front of the net.”

Added O’Donnell: “We needed to cut down the mistakes in our own end.”

And . . .

“And we got 20 shots. Exactly what we said we shouldn’t do, we did,” O’Donnell said.

At game’s end, Robinson was looking around for heroes, mostly in vain.

“What it came down to was a 20-year-old rookie [Jokinen] being the only one playing up to his potential,” Robinson said. “That is what is very disturbing.

“This is the biggest game of the year for us, and the youngest and most inexperienced kid came out and played his heart out. Every night, you are going to get the same game from [Ian] Laperriere, [newcomer Sean] Pronger and at least they take the hit and try every night. . . . [Sandy] Moger gives it his all every night.”

Conspicuously absent in the laundry list were the “name” Kings.

And the Kings are conspicuously absent in the playoff race.

“We’re not out of it, but we’re slowly shoveling dirt over our own graves,” Robinson said.

Not so the Mighty Ducks, who were finishing a three-games-in-four-nights run in which they won twice.

“It took all of our energy,” Hartsburg said, “and everybody had to contribute.”

And everyone did in the Ducks’ win. And few did in the Kings’ loss.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rivalry

KINGS vs. DUCKS

YEAR BY YEAR:

1993-94

Kings, 4-2-0

1994-95

Ducks, 2-1-2

1995-96

Kings, 3-2-1

1996-97

Ducks, 3-1-1

1997-98

Kings, 3-1-1

1998-99

Ducks, 3-0-0

Overall

Ducks, 13-12-5

At Forum

Kings, 8-5-2

At Pond

Ducks, 8-4-3

DUCK OUT

Defenseman Pascal Trepanier leaves game with bruised foot. Page 7