Kings didn’t need to, but they turned Friday’s home opener into a cliff hanger.
After the team’s introduction, the clock introduction and the opening face off by Mayor Stewart Alsgard, action got underway.
A large crowd saw a nervous but high energy Kings team come out and dominate the first period.
Both teams were a little off but Kings’ Matt Scarth put the first goal up on the new scoreboard.
He picked up a puck in the high slot and whirled around to wrist a nice shot over Billy Faust of the Clippers.
The first ended 1-0 but the Kings improved with every shift.
In the second Daniel Schuler broke in from center and let a serious wrist shot go that went in off the glove of Faust.
Kings looked very good with the 2-0 lead but ran into penalty trouble for the remainder of the period and had to rely on some great killing to hold the Clips off the board.
The period ended prematurely when, after a missed two on one in the Clips end by Waugh and Forbes, Gladiuk of the Clips went in and blew a slapshot over the net to shatter a pane of glass.
1:54 was added on to the third but the Clips waited until 1:35 of the final period to score, not once but twice, to send it into overtime.
Kings played with urgency in the first overtime but came up empty and into the second, three on three, we go.
Chris Williams did all the work as he laboured in on the boards for about 20 seconds before he dug the puck out to Scarth. Scarth went from his forehand to his backhand in the crease to roof the puck over a dizzy Faust and the Kings’ bench emptied onto the ice.
Relief was not the word for the Kings after the game.
"Big time, big time," sighed Craig Dalrymple.
"The first game is over and now we have 59 more to go."
"We had them hemmed in there for a lot of the third period but we kind of got on our heels a little bit and they popped two there."
"We felt good though," he said, "going into overtime and we knew we would be alright."
"Scarth has a good pair of hands on him," he said of the winning goal scorer, "I remember he scored highlight reel goal in practice this week."
The game wasn’t one for the highlight reel but the goal and the win were and the two teams get to do it again tonight, Saturday, at the Hap.
