Beating the Kings Is No Sweat

By Jerry Crowe

Nov. 10, 2002 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

MONTREAL — This French-Canadian metropolis has always been a city of ruins for the Kings, whose only trip to the Stanley Cup finals and just about every regular-season visit to the city has been spoiled by the Montreal Canadiens.

Whether at the old Forum, where their title hopes went up in flames in 1993, or at the Canadiens’ new arena, renamed the Bell Centre this year, the Kings have won only eight times in 64 regular-season games at Montreal.

But even given their dismal history on the Canadiens’ home ice, it was startling to see the Kings wither so swiftly and decisively Saturday night, when the Canadiens scored three goals in the first 12 1/2 minutes of a 3-1 victory.

For the sellout crowd of 21,273, the suspense ended early.

For the Kings, the glad tidings following Friday night’s 3-2 victory over the Ottawa Senators were forgotten before the first intermission.

Then, during the intermission, Coach Andy Murray unloaded.

His message?

“That, unfortunately, some of you guys probably would prefer to be someplace else right now,” Murray said he told his players. “But we’re in Montreal, this is a National Hockey League game, there are a lot of people across the country watching this game and we’re in the here and now and it’s our responsibility to play a lot better than we’re playing.

“And then I talked about some individual guys and what they needed to do. We just didn’t play with a National Hockey League level of determination.”

The Canadiens were only too happy to take advantage.

With King defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky in the penalty box for holding Richard Zednik, former King center Yanic Perreault scored the first of his two power-play goals on a shot from the left faceoff circle at 4:31 of the first period.

At 8:43, Zednik scored on a rebound from right in front of the net.

And then at 12:08, with King forward Adam Deadmarsh in the penalty box for hooking Karl Dykhuis, Perreault scored from the right circle.

All three goals were scored against goaltender Felix Potvin, who started for the second night in a row. In his nearly two seasons with the Kings, Potvin is 1-5-1 in the second game when starting games on consecutive nights.

Murray, though, said Potvin was only partially to blame.

“It could be a reflection of how our team plays in front of him in back-to-back games,” the coach said of Potvin’s poor record in starts only 24 hours apart. “I didn’t think our team played very well in front of him tonight.”

The Canadiens’ Jeff Hackett, meanwhile, took a shutout into the final three minutes before Visnovsky scored with 2:14 to play.

It was too little too late, of course, and no consolation to the Kings.

“I don’t know if we felt we were going to come in here and it was going to be an easy night for us or what,” defenseman Mathieu Schneider said. “But I think after the first five minutes we realized that it wasn’t. By then, it was too late. We were on our heels. We just weren’t mentally prepared to play this game tonight.”

The Kings, Schneider said, have yet to find a rhythm. They’ve lost three of their last four games, four of six since Jason Allison was sidelined because of a knee injury. Three games into an eight-game trip, they’re 1-2.

“It’s a matter of playing the same way every night and we haven’t been doing that,” he said. “We need to do that, regardless of the schedule, regardless of the score, regardless of how we feel. We need that consistency.”

No more first periods like the one Saturday night would help.

“There’s no excuse for what happened,” defenseman Mattias Norstrom said. “No trip, nothing like that, is an excuse for us to start the way we did.”