Sandstrom Goal Fends Off Sharks

DALY CITY, Calif. —  It turned out to be a Kings’ victory in overtime, but you knew it was going to be that kind of game when mild-mannered King goaltender Robb Stauber skated out of his crease to grab the Sharks’ Jayson More by the jersey, giving him a shove in the second period.

Actually, it’s not unusual for Stauber, who thinks nothing of charging out of the crease a good 20 feet or so to throw a check. This time, however, play had stopped and More was going off to the dressing room, having been tossed out of the game for instigating a fight with Dave Taylor. More had to skate past Stauber to leave the ice, and the goaltender said he thought More was looking for another confrontation.

Ah, the beauty of regular-season hockey in the second week of April. This is what often happens in back-to-back games with the same team, especially with one (the Sharks) trying merely to win its 12th game and the other (the Kings) trying to get to the playoffs in one piece.

The Kings came out ahead, 3-2 in overtime, Saturday night in a three-hour, fight-marred game. The winning goal was scored by Tomas Sandstrom with 1:38 remaining in overtime. Sandstrom took a rebound off a shot by Wayne Gretzky that banked off the goal frame and skated through the goal crease, beating goaltender Arturs Irbe with a backhander.

“It was the same play Gretz made to Luc (Robitaille) on the winning goal on Thursday,” King Coach Barry Melrose said. “And he did the exact same thing tonight. He’s unbelievable. Then Tomas still had to make a great play to score.”

Two Sharks, More and Dody Wood, were given game misconducts. Otherwise, it was notable only in that this was the last hockey game at the Cow Palace, because the Sharks are moving to their new building in San Jose next season.

T-shirts were being sold here with drawings of cows crying on the front and top 10 Shark memories at the Cow Palace on the back. One more memory could have been added: Most one-sided fight--the Kings’ Marty McSorley pummeling Jeff Odgers at 2:09 of the third period.

Referee Don Koharski let the game slip out of hand when he failed to assess any penalties at the end of the second period when a couple of smaller fights broke out when the teams were heading off the ice.

Stauber headed off a possible confrontation with More because he didn’t think the linesman would intervene. “He (More) was looking for trouble,” Stauber said. “You could see by the look he gave me that he was going after me.”

In between the fights, the sellout crowd of 11,089 watched the Sharks manage to frustrate the Kings once again. Thursday, the Kings escaped with a 2-1 victory in Los Angeles as they went one for nine on the power play.

This time, the Kings only needed five power plays to score their first goal with a man advantage. And the goal from Jimmy Carson was a timely one, coming with 1:03 remaining in the second period to make it 2-2. Carson played the puck off the left-wing boards, skated into the circle and beat Irbe with a slap shot.

For the Kings’ defensemen, the game was grueling. They started with only five because Tim Watters couldn’t play when he came down with flu, which seems to be hitting the whole team. Without Watters, the Kings were down to Alexei Zhitnik, Mark Hardy, Charlie Huddy, Darryl Sydor and McSorley. That number dwindled to four during a five-minute stretch in the third when McSorley received a five-minute major for his one-sided bout with Odgers.

The Sharks had taken a 2-1 lead on two second-period goals. On both goals, Stauber was victimized by his teammates. At 5:37, defenseman Tom Pederson tied it 1-1 with a shot from the upper right circle that beat Stauber on the stick side when it deflected off Sandstrom’s stick out front.

With 4:43 remaining in the second, Gretzky threw a perfect pass from the left corner right to Pederson, who was up high in the slot. Pederson’s shot deflected off teammate Rob Gaudreau and Sydor.