Panthers Roar Past Kings

I’ve given up guessing when the Kings are going to play well. I mean Florida was on their second night of a back to back (thanks for the win over the Ducks btw) so they should have been tired and the Kings rested? But what came out in the first was not a cohesive Kings team. Even Jeff Carter couldn’t do anything on a breakaway, as it seemed like every Panther was going to get on him. He is our most legit scorer so it wasn’t a bad plan on their part. Trevor Lewis had moved up to the top line with Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe, so you can tell Coach Sutter is unhappy with his ‘elites.’ Drew Doughty was a beast as always, laying a hit on 45-year-old Jaromir Jagr 18 seconds in and continuing to stun us all with his sick hockey moves throughout. Kyle Clifford and Jake Muzzin followed suit, with the big hitting at least. Actually Clifford’s line, which included Dwight King and Andy Andreoff, seemed to have the most chemistry of all. The power play did not. The Kings had two chances, at 8:43 and again at 17:30, but both were more like a power outage. I don’t even think they entered their offensive zone on the first, let alone garner a shot on goal. Their first truly good shift came 14 minutes in, but it ended with a horrendous Marian Gaborik trip, which the Panthers capitalized on before the penalty could even take place.

The second began as the first ended, with a Panthers goal they made look easy. Perhaps next time they won’t leave a player wide open in front of the net while battling behind it. Jussi Jokinen beat Peter Budaj clean and the Kings looked uncollected to say the least. It took King to turn the Kings around, when he cleaned up a superb cross ice rebound, lifting the puck up and over Roberto Luongo‘s right pad. Finally, some life! Life the Panthers tried to stifle by calling a coaches challenge for goaltender interference, but they were over ruled. So life for the Kings for reals! And life continued in the form of Tyler Toffoli, who provided a slick, clean pass to an open Kopitar, who was alas tripped before he could get off a good shot. Sad, as he’d already drawn out Luongo’s and could have easily have changed the score. Instead we got another power play so woeful I wished for no more man advantages, because they gave the advantage to the Panthers. It didn’t take too long however, for That 70’s Line to work their magic. Daddy Carter broke through a 4 on 2 to leverage a pass to Pearson who shot through Luongo and into the back of the net. Tied game! And almost half a period left! The Kings didn’t do much with that, racking up shots but nothing to show for them. After the goal light went off a third time for no reason (legitimately no goal this time) and instead Kopitar got a penalty, things looked slightly bleaker. Shots were 24-12 in favor of the Kings but a tied game. Gosh, that’s so LA Kings.

Something else so LA Kings? Giving up a goal immediately into a period. 15 seconds into it, to be exact. After being asked about how often the Kings have played from behind, Sutter said “Well, you don’t want to be doing that all the time. It doesn’t work very well in this league. It’s nice to come back and tie the game, but then it’s not a great goal to start the third period.” The rest of the third was just the Kings trying to play catch up and unable to. An Alec Martinez penalty didn’t do much for any Kings momentum but it really wasn’t his fault. The Kings have had no net front presence as of late, so no rebounds, which are their bread and butter based on their lack of actually skilled scoring this season* (does not apply to Jeff Carter). It was the first time Florida had won in Staples Center since 2002, and keeps the Kings out of the playoff picture at the moment. True, they have games in hand on the Flames, but they’re nipping at our heels and with quite a few divisional games left, the Kings need to win where they can.