Kings Suffer Quick, Painful End
Season over after record 11-game skid
(from the Daily News)
By Matt McHale
Staff Writer
April 4, 2004 - SAN JOSE - Ian Laperriere's wife is expecting a baby today.
For the rest of the Kings, there is no good news. The long season is over and an even longer summer begins.
It will be a summer not just for digesting the last three weeks of a disappointing 2003-04 season that ended Sunday with a gruesome 4-3 overtime loss to the San Jose Sharks.
For players and management it also will be a time to try to figure out their place in a very uncertain NHL future.
"Things don't look very good right now," Laperriere, the Kings' player representative, said when asked about the possible lockout in September. "Not very good at all."
The Kings (28-29-16-9) certainly got a jump on all the gloom by dropping their final 11 games and setting a franchise record for consecutive losses.
They finished the season 11th in the Western Conference with 82 points. Less than two weeks ago, they were in seventh.
But even with all that, Sunday's game completely wrapped up this season's madness in less than five minutes.
The Kings were leading 3-1 with 20 seconds remaining in regulation and looking like the playoff team they were for the first 70 games this season.
Once-promising John Tripp even scored his first goal in 34 games this season.
Then the Sharks, who won the Pacific Division and set a club record with 104 points, pulled goaltender Evgeni Nabokov. Brad Stuart scored on a six-on-four power play with 20 seconds remaining to make it a one-goal game.
With three seconds left, Stuart took a cross-ice pass in front from Vincent Damphousse and beat Roman Cechmanek to tie it.
At the 3:10 mark of OT, Damphousse scored to win it for the Sharks.
"That was our entire season right there," Trent Klatt said. "We were very respectable. We had a lot to be proud of until the end. Then it all fell apart. I don't know if we ran out of gas or lost focus or what."
It certainly didn't help that Adam Deadmarsh and Jason Allison never played a shift this season because of concussions and the Kings set an NHL record with more than 600 man-games lost because of injuries.
Add the loss of Ziggy Palffy for the second half with shoulder surgery and the offense was a wreck. The Kings looked for reinforcements, acquiring Martin Straka from Pittsburgh and Anson Carter from Washington.
Both were epic busts, especially Carter, who had just one assist in his 15 games with the Kings.
When he was acquired March 8, it looked like Carter could be the cornerstone for the new frontier. Now, it is unlikely he will return.
Straka has another year on his contract as does goaltender Roman Cechmanek, who easily played his best 59 minutes and 40 seconds of the season.
Cechmanek, a disappointment this season except for brief stretches, faced 42 shots against the Sharks including 19 in the third period. His glove save on a blast by San Jose captain Patrick Marleau with three minutes left looked like it would clinch the victory.
"But we gave it away the way we have given away so many goals away this season," Luc Robitaille said. "This is so hard right now."
It is especially hard for Robitaille, who never scored again after setting the career record for points by a left wing two weeks ago.
He does not think he will play again if a lockout wipes out all or part of next season.
For a while Sunday, it looked like he might end his career in the penalty box. He was called for holding with 1:18 to play in regulation.
"I would have much rather ended it there than the way this game ended," Robitaille said. "I really don't know what else to say."