Nightmare on Manchester : NHL playoffs: A goal that isn’t in Game 5 at the Forum haunts the Kings, who face elimination at Edmonton tonight.

The Kings’ world didn’t end with Sunday night’s crushing loss. The sun did come up Monday morning.

Several Kings could attest to that. They watched it rise.

A night of flipping and flopping on the ice extended into tossing and turning in their beds for some disgusted, depressed players, who had seen the crucial fifth game of their best-of-seven Smythe Division semifinal series against the Edmonton Oilers slip away on a weird bounce and a controversial call.

With the Oilers leading the series, 3-2, Game 6 will be played tonight at 6:30 PDT at Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.

“It was 4, 5, 6 o’clock before I could get to bed,” goalie Kelly Hrudey said. “We’re only human, only human. When weird things happen, it tears you apart. The hardest thing to do is to tell yourself to keep fighting.”

How weird was the game? Consider that the Oilers won, 5-2, yet King Coach Tom Webster called it “the best game we’ve played in the three years I’ve been here.”

The weirdness went both ways. The Kings’ first goal, Wayne Gretzky’s first in his last 13 playoff games, was scored after Luc Robitaille had banged the puck off the left post. It ricocheted over to Gretzky on the right side, and Gretzky caromed the puck off Edmonton goalie Bill Ranford’s left skate and into the goal.

That seemed to set the tone.

With the score tied, 2-2, in the final period, the Kings appeared to have gone ahead after Mike Donnelly’s deflection of Rob Blake’s shot was blocked by a tumbling Ranford.

The puck landed beside the Oiler goalie, but beyond his reach, in front of the goal line. The Kings’ Corey Millen skated up and swept the puck in.

But he never had time to celebrate. Referee Bill McCreary, apparently unable to see the play, had whistled it dead.

“I sat up all night, thinking of that play,” Donnelly said.

Although most in the capacity Forum crowd of 16,005 and the television audience clearly saw the puck separated from Ranford, McCreary, stationed down-ice to the right of the goal, saw Donnelly’s deflection hit Ranford and then only a mass of arms and legs.

His job, with the puck out of his sight, is to blow his whistle.

None questioned that, but some did question McCreary’s positioning so far from the goal.

“In fairness to him, if he loses sight, he has to blow the whistle to protect the goalie,” Hrudey said. “I would expect the same if I was in that position.”

The result, however, left the Kings in the position of remaining tied, heading into the final half of the final period of their biggest game of the season to date.

Esa Tikkanen broke the tie on another weird bounce.

Firing from the right point on a power play, Tikkanen hit a shot that caromed off King Bob Kudelski’s skate and ricocheted off the left post and then into the net while a helpless Hrudey looked on.

“(Tikkanen) couldn’t have hit a better shot,” Hrudey said. “And he gets it in off a deflection.

It proved too much for the Kings, but the key question now is whether they can recover tonight and force a seventh game at the Forum Thursday night.

To do so, they will have to win two consecutive games, something they haven’t done since before March 11, when their eight-game winning streak ended in Hartford.

They also will have to win in the Northlands Coliseum, something that has proven extremely difficult in the playoffs. Until they staged a comeback in Edmonton last Friday night to win Game 4, the Kings had lost six playoff games in a row at Edmonton.

The Kings also will have to stop an Oiler power-play unit that has scored in every game of the series. They will have to cool Edmonton’s Bernie Nicholls, Vincent Damphousse, Joe Murphy and Tikkanen, and they will have to find a way to score more on Ranord, who is known for his big performances in big games.

The Kings said all the right things about bouncing back Monday before departing on an afternoon flight to Edmonton.

“We’ve got to go on,” Donnelly said. “We can’t sit here and dwell on what happened. Let’s just forget it. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s over.”

Hrudey expressed the same sentiments.

“If you give in to bad things that come your way, whether in life or in a game, you’re going to be a loser,” he said. “There are no depressed people around here. We’re all upbeat. We can’t worry now about what happened 17 hours ago.”

There are bigger things to worry about, such as what is going to happen less than 17 hours from now.

King Notes

Wing Jari Kurri, out since Game 3 with a sprained ankle, is listed as possible for tonight. He skated in practice Monday at the Forum. Defenseman Larry Robinson, out since Game 2 because of an ankle bruise, accompanied the team on the trip but will not play. . . . Edmonton defenseman Kevin Lowe made his first appearance in the series Sunday after sitting out the earlier games with a groin pull. But the injury flared again, and Lowe could be out tonight. Definitely out is Oiler defenseman Geoff Smith, who suffered a dislocated shoulder Sunday. . . . Wings Craig Simpson and Anatoly Seminov are both out with shoulder injuries and will not play.