It’s Another Now-or-Never Situation

Time and the season were running out on them, but the Kings weren’t ready to go gently into the chilly Colorado night.

Facing playoff elimination Friday at Denver, they pulled out a 1-0 victory over the Avalanche and prolonged their second-round playoff series at least one more game. Their playoff path isn’t for the faint of heart or faint of spirit--all six of their victories have been by one goal, three in overtime--but the Kings feel they’re getting stronger.

“We all felt, to a man, that we had put too much into it the last five weeks to let it end there and pat ourselves on the shoulder and say, ‘Good season,’ ” defenseman Mattias Norstrom said of Friday’s triumph, which was built on a third-period goal by Luc Robitaille, solid team defense and goaltender Felix Potvin’s 20-save effort.

“We have a good group, and we believe in ourselves.”

They will test that belief again tonight at Staples Center.

They will face elimination again, with Colorado bringing a 3-2 lead back to the scene of its victories in Games 3 and 4. And Avalanche center Joe Sakic, who missed the last two games because of an injured right shoulder, is likely to return. King Coach Andy Murray based his strategy on the assumption Sakic will play, meaning the Kings might make a lineup change to bolster their overall speed.

“We’re one of seven teams that are playing for the Stanley Cup, and the team that won it two years ago is not one of them,” Murray said, referring to the Dallas Stars, who lost their second-round series to the St. Louis Blues. “We’d like to be one of the last four. I said if we won Game 5, we’d win the series, and I still believe that.”

It’s not going to be easy.

The Kings must again contain center Peter Forsberg and wingers Chris Drury and Ville Nieminen, and they will face additional speed up front if Sakic returns between Alex Tanguay and Milan Hejduk.

Norstrom and Aaron Miller did a good job against Forsberg’s line Friday, and they will see a lot more of the dynamic Swedish center tonight. Andreas Lilja, who made his NHL playoff debut Friday after spending most of the season with Lowell of the American Hockey League, did a good enough job to merit a return appearance today.

“The key was our forwards came back and allowed us to stop their forwards a little higher up, instead of them cycling the puck in our zone,” Norstrom said. “We were getting to them in the neutral zone a little bit better.”

Said defenseman Mathieu Schneider: “We did an excellent job clogging the neutral zone. We’ve got to be on [Forsberg]. We can’t let him make plays. We’re on them as soon as they have the puck. They’re going to have chances--that’s how talented they are. But we can limit their chances.”

If the Kings win tonight, they will play Game 7 Wednesday at Denver, in front of a hostile crowd. But they didn’t do anything the easy way in rallying from a 2-0 series deficit to defeat Detroit in the first round, or in their first five games against Colorado. Why change now?

“It’s do or die, but nobody thought we’d be playing hockey right now,” forward Ian Laperriere said Saturday, after the Kings conducted off-ice workouts at HealthSouth training center. “I know the only guys who knew that would happen was the guys in this [locker] room.

“What I liked [Friday] is everybody was relaxed. They [Avalanche players] do have the pressure. They’ve talked about winning the Stanley Cup since training camp. For us, we talked about making the playoffs. But we weren’t satisfied just to go to the playoffs and to beat Detroit.”

Murray, however, believes the onus is as much on the Kings as on the top-seeded Avalanche. “We certainly have as much pressure as they do,” he said. “What people forget is we’re playing for the Stanley Cup, too. People take that out of the equation. . . .

“We’ve been good in this building. The two games we played here were winnable from our perspective. We know it, and most important, they know it.”

In their 4-3 loss in Game 3, Potvin let a long and stoppable shot by Rob Blake slither through his pads for a dispiriting early goal, and the Kings played catch-up most of the game after Forsberg (one goal, one assist) Hejduk (one goal, two assists) and Tanguay (two assists) worked their magic.

They held Colorado scoreless in the first period of Game 4, but Hejduk and Drury scored 1:46 apart late in the second period to put the game beyond the Kings’ reach.

“We’ve got to play this game the same way we played the last game and play the same type of tight game,” Potvin said. “That’s the way you can beat these guys.”

Players also know they must feed off the fans’ energy without getting so pumped up they lose their discipline. The Kings had more penalties than Colorado in both games at Staples, and the Avalanche capitalized for a critical power-play goal in Game 4.

“We’re going to have to be smarter,” Laperriere said. “When you hear the fans screaming and loud--and trust me, I love it--you have to be careful. If the hit is there, you take it. You don’t go looking for it. That’s what we did in our games in L.A. We retaliated too much.

“We’ve got great fans and they step up their game in the playoffs. When they want to go, you see all those fans stand up. You see it in college basketball but I’ve never seen it at a King game. We just have to relax. We can’t let emotion take over.”

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KINGS vs. COLORADO 6:30 P.M., FSN, ESPN2