Players Are Loose for Peete’s Sake

No, that wasn’t Eddie “the Eagle” Belfour picking up a day job.

It was Harris Peete, trying his hand at being a reasonable facsimile of the Dallas goalie during the Friday morning skate.

The idea came from King Coach Andy Murray, who phoned Peete, a locker room assistant for the team when he isn’t appearing at cabarets in Southern California and Las Vegas as a stand-up comedian.

“He said, ‘We’ve had some trouble with this team, and would I come in and work a Belfour joke,’ ” Peete said.

To keep up the charade, Peete was dressed in a Belfour sweater and mask and kept in a room at the practice center, out of the players’ sights until time came for the ruse.

While Murray gathered the players at one end of the ice, Peete skated onto the other, and the players, at first startled, then wise to the jest, peppered him with pucks.

“Even in that jersey and mask, I don’t look much like Eddie Belfour,” the rotund Peete said. “I look more like a Farmer John sausage.”

He stopped a couple of shots.

“The day I don’t stop any is the day I don’t come back,” said Peete, whose appearance gave him 20 seasons on the ice with the Kings.

Maybe the ruse worked, because the Kings touched the real Belfour for two first-period goals Friday night, as many as they have scored against him in any game of the four this season.

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Winger Marko Tuomainen, who has been nursing a sore foot for two weeks after stopping a shot with it, was listed as a healthy scratch Friday night.

That gave the Kings an opportunity to double-shift Ziggy Palffy at times, much as they did at Phoenix on Wednesday when Tuomainen’s linemate, Craig Johnson, was the scratch.

When Palffy was skating with the Johnson-Ian Laperriere line, it was Steve McKenna, lending a physical presence.