Kings, on a Royal Streak, Win Their 5th in Row, 7-2

After losing games in which they played well and winning games in which the played pitifully, the Kings are balancing their yin-yang season.

Tuesday night, at least, the National Hockey League’s wackiest team played well and won, beating the New York Islanders, 7-2, before a crowd of 14,168 in Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.

The victory extended the Kings’ winning streak to five games, a shocking state of affairs for a team that seemed determined to fail.

“We played well tonight--it looked like the chances were pretty even, but we did more with them,” King Coach Pat Quinn said, sounding very much like opposing coaches after a King loss.

“We aren’t making the double-cross mistakes like we used to--the defense played well tonight. Early in the season, we were allowing the type of goals that were non-confidence type of things.”

Try putting confidence in a team that has allowed the most goals in the league and a team that is trying to make a three-goaltender rotation work.

Behind goalie Darren Eliot, the Kings have blossomed. No doubt this success by the league’s perennial doormats will send eyebrows shooting up.

“It’s not as if there’s been a big turnaround,” Quinn said after a barrage of what-has-your-team-come-to questions from the New York press. “What I think is happening is the team is playing with more confidence, with more cohesion. We are playing better as a team.”

Eliot was the rock on which the Kings stood. He had 37 saves, 17 in the second period, against a frustrated and jumpy Islander team scrambling to make up a four-goal deficit.

“I’m playing more, and they (Eliot’s teammates) are getting used to me and what I do,” the goalie said. “I know this year that if I can be strong, with our offensive punch, we can win games.”

Try this for offensive punch: Luc Robitaille got his first NHL hat trick, Jimmy Carson got two goals and Dave Taylor had three assists as the Kings improved their record to 13-14-2. The Islanders are 14-12-2.

Most of the offensive punch came after a sluggish first period in which the Kings got a power-play goal from Bernie Nicholls. Then, both teams exploded in the second period--the Kings for four goals, the Islanders with vicious play.

Mike Bossy got New York’s only goal of the period at 2:11. His slap shot from the right point hit the right post and bounced in. Bossy, taken off Bryan Trottier’s line, played well but was not a factor.

The Kings got two quick goals from two rookies. On the first, Taylor found himself in a familiar position--pinned against the boards digging out the puck. Taylor kicked the puck free, and Marcel Dionne had it for a moment, then slid it back to Taylor.

Taylor passed to Robitaille, who tapped it in from the right side at 5:52.

The other rookie scored next. Carson appeared to want to center the puck, no goal in mind, but his shot banked in off a skate to give the Kings a 3-1 lead at 6:03.

After that, all sense of hockey decorum, assuming such a thing exists, quickly unraveled.

One team’s goal is another team’s frustration, and as the former piled up for the Kings, the latter bared itself for the Islanders. A slew of penalties set the tone for the rest of the period.

Both the Kings’ Dave (Tiger) Williams and the Islanders’ Brian Curran were given double minors for roughing at 13:26, causing the simmering animosity between the teams to boil over. Less than a minute later, King defenseman Grant Ledyard was called for roughing and Islander left wing Duane Sutter got a double minor for high sticking.

The Kings got a power play out of it as Carson scored at 14:57.

Islander goaltender Billy Smith was livid. He had made one save while flat on his back, a position he gained courtesy of Taylor. What he didn’t see was one of his own teammates, Gord Dineen, shove Taylor from behind into Smith.

Smith was also angry at another King--defenseman Mark Hardy--being of the opinion that Hardy had lingered too long in the crease.

The Kings’ Jim Fox also prodded Smith’s ire a mite with a beautiful length-of-the-ice charge featuring three shot fakes that moved Smith back and forth. Fox’s goal, at 17:59, gave the Kings a 5-1 lead and gave the Islanders the creeps.

“I think there were getting a little frustrated,” said the Kings’ Bob Bourne, a former Islander who was so eager to play against his ex-teammates that he said he went to the rink at 4:40 p.m., almost three hours before game time.

“Tonight, I was hungry and I was mad,” he said. “It was important to me to win tonight. I felt like an L.A. King tonight.”

For Bourne, that meant taking a chop to the bridge of his nose from goaltender Smith, who also drove an elbow to Phil Sykes’ face.

Bourne got his cut coming to the aid of Sykes. The incident caused a gloves-on-the-ice fracas that solved nothing but relieved some tension.

The third period was somewhat ragged for both teams. Robitaille scored two goals after Eliot had allowed one to Pat LaFontaine.

King Notes

The Kings, who are three wins away from the club record of eight straight victories, play the New York Rangers tonight in Madison Square Garden. The Rangers are mired in last place in the Patrick Division with an 8-12-6 record and a lot of morale--all low. The Rangers beat the Kings the only other time they have met this season, 5-4 in overtime.