Huet
Displays a Savoir Faire in the Clutch
By Jerry Crowe, Times Staff Writer
February 26, 2003
*Goalie, who is only the second Frenchman to play in the NHL, stops 16
shots after replacing Storr and leads the Kings to a 5-3 victory at
Pittsburgh. L.A. moves into ninth place in the West.*
PITTSBURGH - With Tuesday night's game and
their playoff hopes in danger of slipping away, the Kings turned over
their goaltending duties to a 27-year-old Frenchman who before Thursday
had never played in the NHL.
Firing away at Cristobal Huet would be Mario
Lemieux, the ageless NHL scoring leader, and the rest of the Pittsburgh
Penguins, who already had scored two consecutive goals in 15 1/2 minutes
against Jamie Storr.
"I think if we would have let down on
him," King forward Bryan Smolinski said later of the greenhorn,
"it would have been a disaster."
The Kings, though, scored four consecutive
goals before Lemieux finally beat Huet midway through the third period,
then scored another only 34 seconds later to wrap up a 5-3 victory in
front of 11,736 at Mellon Arena.
Huet, believed to be only the second
Frenchman and the first French goaltender to play in the NHL, was equal to
the formidable task. Of the 16 shots he turned away, three were from
Lemieux, who scored two goals and assisted on a third.
"To play against Mario Lemieux, that's
unbelievable," he said.
Almost equally unbelievable, or so it seemed
at the time, was King Coach Andy Murray giving up on Storr so early in the
game.
He had pulled Storr after the first period of
Thursday night's 5-0 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers, hoping to spark a
rally from a 2-0 deficit and to rest his top goaltender for the next
night's game against the Buffalo Sabres.
But this was different.
"We've got to make a statement,"
Murray said. "We're not going to accept any player not getting the
job done for us.
"So to me it wasn't a great move, it was
the only move."
Smolinski and Ziggy Palffy each scored two
goals and Palffy also had two assists to help Huet to his first NHL
victory in only his second appearance. Palffy has scored 15 goals in 18
games, Smolinski nine in 13. And, since acquiring them from the New York
Islanders in 1999, the Kings are 15-0-2 when both score.
Defenseman Jaroslav Modry, ending a 31-game
goal drought, also scored for the Kings, who moved to within five points
of the eighth-place Edmonton Oilers in the West, inching into ninth place
ahead of the Chicago Blackhawks.
Huet, though, was the story.
"I thought I was OK," he said,
lauding his teammates. "When I went in, they really shut the door. I
don't have much experience, so they played really hard for me."
A French Olympian in last year's Salt Lake
City Games, Huet played the last four seasons in Switzerland. Mostly on
the recommendation of Jim Koleff, his coach in Switzerland and a good
friend of Murray's, he was drafted by the Kings in the ninth round of the
NHL draft two years ago.
After his contract with Lugano of the Swiss
league expired after last season, the Kings offered him a contract
"and I decided to take my chances."
He was called up from the minors last month
after Felix Potvin suffered a knee injury, was sent back down and recalled
again last week.
"He works hard in practice,"
Smolinski said. "We shoot hard at him and it paid off because he
played great tonight. He was the reason we sneaked out of here."
Only Lemieux solved him.