Kings Shut Down Jagr, Earn Shutout

PITTSBURGH —  No, Mattias Norstrom didn’t follow the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Jaromir Jagr to his car. And no, Rob Blake didn’t tail him to the locker room between periods.

But those were the only times Jagr was left alone Tuesday night, and the Kings’ Jamie Storr was the beneficiary in a 3-0 victory, the second in a row for the team and goalie.

It also was the Kings’ fourth victory in seven games, which counts as a run of sorts for a team that has been walking all season.

The addition of two points in the standings was, in large part, because of the subtraction of Jagr, one of the league’s best players.

“I saw Jagr take it once wide on [Norstrom] and he didn’t make it, and he didn’t do it again the whole night,” Blake said. “It doesn’t matter how good a player is, if he knows that if he tries to go wide he’s going to get hit for it, he’s going to try something else.”

That something else was to pass it to a trailing player, which in the third period was Donald Audette, who scored his second goal in as many games as a King.

“There was a shift change, and I saw the pass coming from the bench,” said Audette, who skated to the puck, intercepted it, deked Jiri Slegr off his feet and sailed in alone on Pittsburgh goalie Peter Skudra.

That made the score 3-0. Goals 27 seconds apart in the second period by Glen Murray and Vladimir Tsyplakov had given the Kings a 2-0 edge and allowed Storr to relax.

“At the start of the game was the only time I was a little leery of scoring chances,” he said after his third victory.

“Right at the start of the game Jagr got a little backdoor play and the puck went off my pads, and then I settled down and the rest is history.”

Skudra could only envy the help Storr got from Norstrom and Blake.

It was Skudra’s second game in as many nights after he had not played since Nov. 3. His play mirrored that of the Penguins, who were sluggish.

“It’s tough in this league to play back-to-back nights,” said Pittsburgh Coach Kevin Constantine, whose club had lost, 7-1, on Monday at Toronto in a game in which starting goalie Tom Barrasso was injured.

“Our team follows a little bit of a pattern, a little less energy. We have trouble scoring on back-to-back nights.”

The Kings had little trouble scoring, once Murray got started. He had a goal waved off in the first period because Doug Bodger was in the crease.

It was the sixth King goal that has been waved off this season.

But no matter.

“You know, it’s funny,” Coach Larry Robinson said. “There was an air of confidence among the guys. They were ready tonight, and I don’t think there was anything that was going to keep them from being focused.”

Murray, who had been skating on a line with Craig Johnson and Olli Jokinen, hung around for an extra shift in the second period and used it to score at 17:59 after Ray Ferraro had won a face-off against Stu Barnes.

“It was just a set play,” said Murray, a former Penguin who scored for the first time in 15 games against his old team.

“Ray scrambled for it and it came right to me and I shot it and it went right in.”

Flush with success while skating with Ferraro and Tsyplakov, Murray stayed on the ice a while longer and beat Maxim Galanov to the puck behind the Penguin net. Murray flipped it in front of the goal to Tsyplakov, who also was without a defensive hindrance when he made it 2-0.

The victory was Robinson’s 100th as King coach.

He didn’t know about win No. 100, he said, until “some of the guys were coming up after. I had no idea.

“I was just beginning to wonder when we were going to play like we did tonight. . . . That’s as good a game as we’ve played this year. . . . That’s the way we’re capable of playing, and that’s the way I want to see us playing from now on.”

Storr will take that view too.