Kings’ Streak Extended

The game started at 7:36 Thursday night.

The Kings started about an hour later, by which time they were on their way to a 5-1 loss to the New York Rangers, their sixth in a row and the worst of the lot.

The losses have been jammed into 10 days, and Thursday’s was particularly difficult because it happened before 16,005, the second sellout of the season, and the first since the home opener.

Most were there to see the Rangers’ Wayne Gretzky skate one more time in the Great Western Forum.

Gretzky managed an assist on Alexei Kovalev’s power-play goal, the game’s last.

The Kings finished the night in a daze broken only by the odd foray to the net and Matt Johnson’s third-period penalty when he delivered a shot to the back of Jeff Beukeboom’s head. Beukeboom had tripped Glen Murray earlier in the period.

But all of that came well after things were decided.

“I really think that tonight we looked fatigued out there in the first period,” said Dave Taylor, the Kings’ vice president and general manager. “We had no jump in our step.”

The Rangers, winners of only five of their first 18 games, had plenty of pep in taking a 3-0 first-period lead on goals by Manny Malhotra, Kovalev and Adam Graves.

Besides the first-period shutout, it was largely a no-hitter by the Kings, winners of only five of their first 20. In this one, their checking early on was nonexistent.

“It wasn’t a very good effort, was it?” Coach Larry Robinson said. “It’s very discouraging. It looked like we were carrying pianos around.”

The Kings turned the light on at 8:08 of the second period when Mark Visheau launched a shot from the blue line, Olli Jokinen leaped over the streaking puck and Luc Robitaille screened Ranger goalie Dan Cloutier, who seemed to have stopped the shot. Instead, the puck popped into the air and into the net.

It was Visheau’s first NHL goal and his third point.

It was also the Kings’ high-water mark.

“It doesn’t matter,” Visheau said. “It could be my goal or Luc’s goal or Manny Legace’s goal. We didn’t win. That was what matters.”

New York answered with John MacLean’s power-play goal at 11:38, the product of his rebound of Mathieu Schneider’s missed shot from the right point.

That made the score 4-1, taking much of what steam existed from the Kings, who outshot New York, 29-25, though most of the efforts were ineffective.

The loss was goalie Manny Legace’s ninth in 13 decisions spread over 15 games.

In that spread, he gave up only 11 goals in his first eight games, but 26 over his next seven.

“He’s had to play a lot of hockey,” Taylor said.

He also has had to endure five of the six consecutive losses and play with the knowledge that an early goal was probably going to add to the streak.

That early goal came during the Kings’ moribund first period, when Malhotra scored from near the blue line after the puck was left for him by Mike Knuble on a drop pass.

The Kings’ penalty-killing average--best in the league at 90% coming into Thursday’s game--took a hit on Kovalev’s goal, which came when he bored in on Legace’s left and took a pass from Niklas Sundstrom.

The score became 3-0 when Todd Harvey spun away from the Kings’ Mattias Norstrom 40 feet in front of Legace and launched a shot that was deflected in by Graves.

“We knew we were tired, and we were just trying to stay in the game, particularly early,” Robinson said. “But down, 3-0, that’s the kiss of death.”

The game was part of what is becoming a countdown to next week’s hiatus. The Kings play Chicago on Saturday at the Forum, then have six days before facing Phoenix on Nov. 28.

“They’re tired,” Robinson said. “They’re dead tired.”

The respite is being regarded as a period of healing for the Kings, who are hoping to have goalie Stephane Fiset and center Jozef Stumpel back after Thanksgiving--if not by Saturday--and shorten the recovery process for some other players.

The problem is that they have a chance of entering it with seven losses in a row, if something doesn’t turn around Saturday against the Blackhawks.