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Over and out Wings complete sweep of Kings
Posted: Thursday May 11, 2000 12:10 AM
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Staples Center lights finally came on after a 25-minute delay. The Detroit Red Wings' penalty-killing unit kept the Los Angeles Kings' power play in the dark. Pat Verbeek and Larry Murphy scored power-play goals 1:57 apart late in the first period and Chris Osgood earned his eighth career playoff shutout as the Red Wings beat the Kings 3-0 Wednesday night to sweep their first-round series. "The sick part is it's not even their big guys who made that big a difference," Kings center Ian Laperriere said, citing Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby, Darren McCarty and Martin Lapointe as the most physical Red Wings in the series. Sergei Fedorov scored an empty-netter on a breakaway with 51 seconds remaining. Some of the numerous red-and-white-clad Red Wings fans tossed octopuses entwined with strips of red cloth onto the ice after Fedorov's third goal of the series. The Red Wings clinched the Western Conference series in Scotty Bowman's 100th playoff game as coach. His playoff record of 67-33 in seven seasons with Detroit includes consecutive Stanley Cup championships.
"When you look at the series, the difference was our penalty killing against their power play and our power play was very productive," Bowman said. "In the third period, they threw everything at us. The Kings are a pretty aggressive team. They're not easy to play against and they take a lot out of you." Osgood made 25 saves for his second 2-0 shutout of the series. Detroit won the first game by the same score. Stephane Fiset stopped 25 shots. "The penalty killing was huge and when we made mistakes there, Ozzie came up big for us," Verbeek said. "He made some saves that were outstanding. I was just really impressed by how cool and calm he was in there. He saw the puck really well." The Kings were swept out of the playoffs for the seventh time in franchise history and second in three years, having lost four straight to St. Louis in 1998. They have lost 12 consecutive playoff games since winning Game 1 of the 1993 Stanley Cup finals against Montreal. "Everybody looks at a four-game series as a blowout, but this wasn't a blowout at all," McCarty said. "This was a battle, each shift, game in and game out. We're close to playing exactly the way we want to play. We're competing every shift and our work ethic is there." The start of the third period was delayed for 25 minutes when a computer glitch knocked out the arena's halogen lights, and both teams were sent back to their dressing rooms. The game's first delay occurred in the second period when two plexiglass panels broke, resulting in a seven-minute stoppage. Los Angeles went 0-for-23 on the power play in the series -- including 0-for-7 Wednesday -- against a Detroit penalty-killing unit that is tied for first in the NHL. "Power play, penalty kills, specialty teams. They dominated and we didn't," said Kings captain Rob Blake, who was limited to four shots in 31 minutes. "When your power play doesn't score at all, the guys on the ice for those are the ones that have to be accountable." The Kings were done in by ill-advised penalties once again. They lost 2-1 after two high-sticking penalties led to Detroit power-play goals in Game 3 Monday. "We know what we did wrong again. They were smarter all series. They didn't retaliate like we did," Laperriere said. "Even if you were hitting or slashing them, you didn't see any retaliation. We took way too many penalties and it hurt us again." With Jozef Stumpel off for crosschecking Chris Chelios, Verbeek gave Detroit a 1-0 lead with his only goal of the series at 17:10 of the first period. Mattias Norstrom was called for holding Fedorov's stick, which set up Murphy's first goal of the series that put Detroit ahead 2-0 at 19:41. A shot by Brendan Shanahan hit the post, resulting in a wild six-player crease scramble that caught Fiset at the bottom. With his legs blocked, Fiset wasn't able to get up and Murphy, a former King in the playoffs for the 17th consecutive season, fired a sharply angled shot from the left side into an open net. "McCarty ran at me and he was sitting on me," Fiset said. "He's right on top of you and the referee doesn't see that. That's bad. That gave them a lot of momentum." Murray said one of the two referees was told by the other officials that McCarty interfered with Fiset, but the referees didn't see it. "To us, McCarty came in behind him and bumped him and he wasn't pushed," Murray said. "We're not going to condemn the refereeing. It was a real scramble in front of the net. At the time, I was not real pleased, but we didn't score on our power play, we didn't score any goals." Twice the Kings had power-play chances in the second period, but never seriously threatened when they failed to get traffic in front of Osgood and wasted precious seconds setting up shots that went awry.
Trailing 2-0, one of the Kings' few scoring chances in the third
came at 16:27. Osgood made a kick save of Nelson Emerson's shot,
then smothered Emerson's rebound attempt while falling on his back
to force the whistle.
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