Jason Allison still was Bruins property a year ago when the Kings regrouped, won Games 5 and 6 and extended the Colorado Avalanche to seven games in the Western Conference semifinals.

	Jason Allison's line has produced, but it hasn't been enough.

But in part because he, like virtually everyone else who had played with Ray Bourque, was wondering whether the greybeard defenseman would skate off with the Stanley Cup, Allison was paying attention to the Los Angeles-Colorado series.

So the Kings' center knows what happened.

And he sees no reason it can't again -- with a different ending.

"We could have won all three of the games we've lost," he said after the Avalanche's Game 4 victory in the Staples Center Tuesday night. "It's not like they took it to us. We feel confident that we can come back."

The Avalanche's Game 4 victory Tuesday night in Los Angeles involved a skate-blade thin difference, and again, it's funny how little things -- the breaks, the bounces, the whims of fortune -- are transformed into monumental gaps when we discuss playoff hockey. In that sense, Allison is right. But that's also the nature of the NHL's postseason, right? Always has been, always will be.

But this time, the Kings needed Game 4 to have a shot, and they didn't get it. The Kings have allowed Colorado to get its act together, so to speak.

Last year, facing the same 3-1 deficit in the Western Conference semifinals, the Kings won a pair of 1-0 games, extending the series to a seventh game. That would have been a high-stakes, high-tension showdown under normal circumstances. For the Avalanche, it was more than that; a loss would have affected the course of the franchise, from the tenure of coach Bob Hartley to the decisions over whether to aggressively seek to re-sign Joe Sakic, Rob Blake and Patrick Roy. Sakic missed Games 4 and 5 with a shoulder injury and was far from 100 percent in the final two games.

Colorado won that Game 7, hours before Peter Forsberg doubled over in pain at a Denver restaurant and was rushed to a local hospital and set off his strange year.

Ten days ago, when the first-round matchups finally were set, the Kings seemed a bona fide threat -- and fashionable choice -- to knock off the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Forsberg still was trying to get ready to play, but his status was uncertain and so was the magnitude of his contribution when he did return.

Milan Hejduk was out, trying to recover from pulled abdominal and groin muscles, and his replacement on the right side of the Sakic-centered top line -- Radim Vrbata -- was a 20-year-old rookie.

Darius Kasparaitis, the much-touted acquisition at the trading deadline, still appeared mystified in the Avalanche system and was overdoing this "discipline" deal.

All that aside, the Kings had gone 25-11-5 in the second half, cementing their claim as one of the league's hottest teams and a legitimate possibility to come out of the Western Conference, which was so tightly packed below the Red Wings in the regular season. That top line of Allison, Adam Deadmarsh and Ziggy Palffy could at least hold its own with the Sakic line, if, as likely, they were matched up most of the time.

The Kings teased everyone. It isn't so much that the Kings are blowing their opportunity; they're just missing it. The events of a year ago work to their disadvantage in the sense that the Avalanche don't want to go through what they did a year ago with the Kings. The incentive to close it out with a Game 5 victory at home is higher this time.

The Allison line has seven of the Kings' nine goals in the series, but some of the talk about it outplaying the Sakic line has been greatly overstated. The line was a combined minus-3, for example, in the Avalanche's 5-3 Game 2 victory.

But the crucial difference has been the lack of contribution from the Kings' second line, combined with the re-arrival of Forsberg and revival of the Colorado two-line punch.

Has anyone seen Bryan Smolinski? The Avalanche hasn't. The Kings need him to step up to have a shot. Cliff Ronning was being belted into ineffectivess before he was a Game 4 scratch with a possible concussion. Deadmarsh also crashed into the boards, head-first, in Game 4 and might not be completely recovered for Game 5.

In contrast, Colorado's all-center line of Forsberg, who is playing on the left side, Chris Drury and Steve Reinprecht is doing damage. The Kings are continuing to have Mattias Norstrom hit Forsberg at every opportunity to both test him physically and attempt to derail his game.

Felix Potvin was terrific in Game 4 and the Kings let his work go to waste.

It all means the Kings are on the brink of elimination, and while some of it has to do with the balance in the West and the luck of the playoff pairings, it will go down as a regression. It is good for the league and the game when the Southland starts paying attention to the NHL, both in the media and on the street. The phenomenon is common in U.S. markets, of course, but nowhere is the bandwagon and out-of-the-woodwork effect more pronounced than in L.A. There are media members covering this series in L.A.who had to be reminded that the game is broken into periods, not quarters; that Bruce McNall isn't in the owner's box; and that Wayne Gretzky still isn't playing for the Kings. And the goal is for that interest to spread through the Southland when the Kings make a serious run at the Cup.

It isn't going to happen this year.

Terry Frei of The Denver Post is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. His address for email signed with names and hometowns is freifeedback@hotmail.com.