Kings Fall in Almost No Time

DALLAS — The game was only seconds old and Stephane Fiset was looking at rush hour.

Here came Dave Reid. Here came Pat Verbeek. Here came Joe Nieuwendyk.

Help.

Reid to Verbeek to Nieuwendyk to the net, with only the Kings’ Doug Bodger between them, futilely trying to disrupt things.

Goal, Dallas, and 59 minutes 29 seconds remained Sunday afternoon at Reunion Arena.

Fiset was perfect for that 59:29, but his teammates were not. The 1-0 defeat was the Kings’ fourth one-goal loss to the Stars this season, their 16th game without a win against Dallas. Their record against the Stars is 0-10-6 since 1995.

It didn’t take a lot of Stars to finish the Kings off Sunday.

“We only played 20 minutes of hockey,” Coach Larry Robinson said.

Those 20 minutes came in the third period, when Dallas was protecting its lead, at which it is well-practiced. The Stars are 26-1-5 when ahead after two periods.

By the time the Kings lit things up, they had been outshot, 29-11, and Dallas goaltender Ed Belfour should have been charged admission.

“That’s for sure . . . but in the third, I think we came back strong and it was my turn to sit on my net and watch them,” Fiset said. “[But] the first thing that came into my mind [in the first minute]: ‘Is it going to be like this all night, or am I going to have a break sometimes?’ ”

Not much of a break, actually.

“The very first shift of the game, we get four guys caught and it’s a four-on-one and we give up a goal,” Robinson said.

The Kings couldn’t answer the rest of the game.

The 1-0 deficit was created when King defenseman Sean O’Donnell went to the boards for the puck and it eluded him. When the puck jumped over the stick of King winger Sandy Moger, Bodger found himself retreating, hemmed in by Stars.

After Nieuwendyk scored, Fiset was behind, 1-0.

“He is the reason it was only 1-0,” Robinson said. “It should have been 7-0. He kept us in the game.”

Nieuwendyk agreed.

“You get a goal as quickly as that one, you figure you’re going to get more,” he said. “We had a lot of chances and he played well.”

Fiset thwarted Mike Modano’s breakaway, rejected Nieuwendyk’s doorstep jam on a power play, fell on Darryl Sydor’s wraparound. The King goalie punctuated one flurry by hammering the puck into the seats, drawing a delay-of-game penalty in the second period but finally getting a chance to exhale.

There were few other opportunities to take a breath, because the game was played as though the Dallas end of the ice was contaminated--regardless of which end that was.

The Kings had only seven first-period shots--four of those in the final 2:57--then were outshot, 18-4, in the second. After 40 minutes, Dallas owned a 29-11 shooting advantage, but Fiset owned the Stars.

Save for one shot, the first.

He may have never played better in a loss.

So what?

“Right now I’m only satisfied with a win,” he said. “I know I played good today, but I can’t be satisfied because we didn’t win.

“Sometimes that’s going to happen, and sometimes you’re going to play a [bad] game and win. . . . There is pressure [when you fall behind quickly], but you know you’re feeling good. . . . Most of the time, I feel it on the first shot.”

On Sunday, he felt it on the second.

By then, it was apparent there were going to be no points in Dallas. Before the Kings’ six-game trip, which ends Wednesday night at the Arrowhead Pond, Robinson had talked of getting points in Calgary, St. Louis, Chicago and maybe against the Ducks. Anything against Detroit and Dallas, the two best teams in the West, would be a bonus, he said.

And then there was a bonus win in Detroit on Wednesday night.

And nothing on Sunday afternoon. The Kings are 2-2-1 on the trip, heading back to Southern California.

On a downer.

“You’re not going to win a game with 18 shots,” defenseman Rob Blake said.

And not going to win one without a goal, which the Kings have proved eight times this season.

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COLORADO GETS FLEURY

The Avalanche acquires Theoren Fleury from Calgary in a deal that ended the Kings’ hopes of trading for the All-Star winger. Page 9