Sandy » Having dominated the game and held a lead for almost the entire time, Real Salt Lake was only a few minutes away from walking off the field at Rio Tinto Stadium with its fourth straight home victory, despite playing without three regular starters.

Then, everything went haywire.

In one of the wildest finishes in Major League Soccer history, RSL and the Los Angeles Galaxy traded stomach-churning penalty kicks in stoppage time, before the Galaxy's Mike Magee stunned the home team with a last-minute strike between goalkeeper Chris Seitz's legs from an almost impossible angle near the touchline to salvage a 2-2 draw that felt a lot more like a loss to RSL.

"It's really tough for something like that to happen," RSL's Tony Beltran said.

Nobody in the RSL locker room could fathom that it actually did, either.

Not only was it only the third time in league history that three goals had been scored in stoppage time, but the sheer improbability of Magee's game winner had everybody eager to view a replay.

"Anything could have happened on that last play, at the end," RSL's Will Johnson said. "They've got everybody in the box. We do, too. Ball's just bouncing around, finds their guy and somehow -- even though we had guys on the line -- it somehow ended up in the back of the net. That's a tough one to swallow."

Johnson played a pivotal role in the chaotic finish.

With RSL clinging to a 1-0 lead that came on striker Robbie Findley's diving header in the 34th minute, Johnson inadvertently handled the ball in the box -- "a complete fluke of a play," coach Jason Kreis said -- and allowed the Galaxy's Landon Donovan to knock a penalty kick off diving goalkeeper Chris Seitz in the 91st minute.

But it was only moments later that Johnson volunteered to step up and take a penalty for RSL, after striker Fabian Espindola was pulled down in the box at the other end of the field.

"It speaks well for him," Kreis said. "There's a lot of players who would have shied away and said, 'No, it's obviously not my night.' But he stepped forward and took it, and took it well."

Johnson easily beat the Galaxy's Donovan Ricketts for a 2-1 lead, and RSL seemed to have rescued itself from oblivion.

Except that it didn't.

With the Galaxy pushing hard against RSL's packed-in defense, a desperation shot caromed high off defender Robbie Russell at the top of the box and found its way to Magee, nearly on the touchline to the left of the goal. While several of his teammates signaled in vain for an offsides call, Beltran slid to try to block the shot, but Magee fired the ball under Beltran and between Seitz's legs at the near post.

Seitz said he "saw enough of it" that he should have stopped the shot.

"That one's bitter," Kreis said. "When you lead the game twice and walk away with a draw, you're going to be disappointed."

mcl@sltrib.com