Robitaille Gets the Kings Started, and Fiset Does the Rest

Luc Robitaille wears No. 20 on the back of his Kings’ sweater.

Better he should have worn concentric circles Saturday night.

Adrian Aucoin took a shot at him. So did Bryan McCabe. Various other Vancouver players did too, some hitting the target, some missing.

All of this happened after Robitaille scored three minutes into the game to start the Kings winging to a 3-0 victory before 13,844 at the Great Western Forum, producing something they haven’t had all season: a winning streak.

Granted, it’s a modest two games, but the Kings will take all they can get.

“It was a great effort by everybody,” King Coach Larry Robinson said. “It makes a big difference with [Rob] Blake in there, and [goalie Stephane] Fiset was pretty sharp back there.”

Actually, that the streak exists at all is largely due to the efforts of Fiset and some penalty-killing friends, who survived 90 seconds of five-on-three play in the third period, then an additional five minutes on a Vancouver power play.

Both were generated by slashing and game-misconduct penalties called on Blake, who hammered Harry York’s right wrist with his stick and ended his return to the King lineup with 15:45 to play. Blake had missed 15 games because of a broken foot.

Doug Bodger was already in the penalty box at the time, and the Canucks had three shots during their two-man advantage. Fiset handled all three, one by Bill Muckalt while flat on his back with the puck underneath him.

“Muckalt had a great opportunity and fanned on the shot,” Vancouver Coach Mike Keenan said. “That might have been a real turnaround for us. We needed a spark and that could have done it for us.”

Instead, Fiset blew the spark out before the Canucks could start a fire.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I know the puck bounced over his stick on the shot and I fell on it on my back.”

The offense came from what is becoming Robitaille’s nightly quota: a goal and an assist. And from an empty-net goal by Yanic Perreault, who had called his shot. Perreault said Saturday morning he would get a goal in honor of his son, Jeremy Francois, born Friday afternoon.

“I’ll put the puck in a frame for him,” Perreault said.

And the empty-net status?

“I won’t tell him unless he asks me.”

Robitaille has a goal and an assist in each of the last three games, has goals in four in a row, and his 14 goals this season represent a healthy portion of the Kings’ 59.

That his why he finds himself a target.

“Actually, all of our hockey players were targets,” Robinson said.

And that is why Robitaille’s King brethren felt the need to trade shot for shot on his behalf. All of that generated a roughly played game in which the penalty boxes had more traffic than the San Diego Freeway at 5 p.m. Friday afternoon.

One of the penalties, against Vancouver’s Markus Naslund--for diving, on a night in which such a foul was the equivalent of going 37 mph in a 35-mph zone--generated a King power play that yielded a goal by Craig Johnson.

Make that a disputed goal. His stick never hit the puck.

“I really didn’t see it,” Johnson said. “I know I was dragging my skate and the puck hit my toe. I’ve had enough goals waved off. I was due one of those.”

Robitaille centered the puck on the play and Johnson, breaking toward the goal, dribbled it beneath Canuck goalie Garth Snow.

Johnson, who has struggled offensively and recently was moved to a higher-powed line to jump-start his game, has said he has been seeing goalie pads where he once saw holes through which to shoot the puck.

In this case, the hole was there, and he found it to make the score 2-0 at 14:37 of the second period.

The first goal had come when Ray Ferraro carried the puck toward the net, shot past the target and chased it down. He beat Vancouver’s Trent Klatt and sent the puck sliding toward Robitaille, who was standing alone behind the net.

Robitaille skated around to Snow’s right and shoved the puck toward the net. Snow blocked it, tumbling, but the rebound slid to Robitaille, who merely had to loft it over the fallen Snow.

The two shots were the first of 18 the Kings had in outshooting Vancouver, 18-3, in the first period. After Robitaille’s goal, Snow had to deal with point-blank efforts by Jozef Stumpel, Perreault and Johnson, doing so effectively to hold the fort until some cavalry could arrive.

It never did.