It was 3-0. Again. But Kings lose 4-3 in OT

Oh Kings, you’re just not good, are you? Granted the Sharks aren’t either, which is perhaps why I didn’t expect much from this game. Martin Jones and Jonathan Quick both came in with some pretty lackluster stats – Quick had a .884 SV% and and 3.45 GAA. Jones had a .889 SV% and 3.20 GAA. So I guess a game with 3 goals a piece was to be expected. But neither got much action to begin with. There were literally two shots on goal in the first almost 6 minutes, but at 5:53 that second one went in. For the Sharks, Karlsson, who’s been relatively ineffective  against every other team since joining the Sharks, sniped one right over Quick’s shoulder. Which the Kings followed up with a penalty kill for the amateur penalty of too many men on the ice. It took the Kings almost 10 full minutes to even register a shot, and that was generous. They’d found some groove about 15 to 16 minutes into the period, the Adrian Kempe – Blake Lizotte – Austin Wagner line doing the heavy lifting. They were easily the best line on the ice all game. Dustin Brown and his line managed to generate a little; Brown was defended by two Sharks on an otherwise breakaway and got much closer to Jones than he really had any right too. I love watching his hustle. With 2:08 left in the first period, the momentum was swinging the Kings way, a power play to close it out – but as with many of the Kings power plays, it wasn’t great. And the momentum was too little too late to do anything of significance.

After getting the first two shots on goal in the second, Doughty took a penalty :51 seconds in. Not the best way to start the period, but after an effective penalty kill they had their turn at the power play again. It was just as ineffective as the Sharks sadly. 6:19 in was when disaster struck for the Kings. Meier took a shot scarily similar to Karlsson’s that went in by Quick’s shoulder, and less than 3 minutes later he got another. It was a play you could see forming from space. Quick lunged right, Dillon passed cross crease to a stupidly open Meier and bam. It was done. The Kings just couldn’t find their form. They looked hopelessly lost, always out of position, and honestly a little defeated after that third one. Their next power play did nothing to alleviate any concerns. (Seriously I thought we were working on the power play.) It wasn’t until 1:01 remaining in the second, they managed to break Jones’s shutout (and I’d been jinxing it all period!) While I would have they preferred they wait a second (literally, at 1:00 the McFlurry minute started and we would have all gotten frozen confectionary), it was a huge goal from Kempe, a desperately needed one because going into the third down 3-0 would have been psychologically a much harder hurdle. Lizotte and Wagner did the work along the boards to get it to him and his snap shot did the rest.

It still wasn’t looking good in the third, however. The Kings were 1-10-0 when allowing the first goal, 0-9-0 when trailing after 1, and 0-11-0 when trailing after 2. And there must have been 4 rebounds in a stretch of about 30 seconds that Jones’s stopped; they just kept coming up short and history was not on their side. Clifford and Lizotte, (that name just keeps popping up now, doesn’t it?), had a spectacular sequence that mostly just had me wondering not, ‘how did that not go in’, but more, ‘why haven’t the Kings been playing like that all game?!’ The next shift Anze Kopitar, Brown and Alex Iafallo spent over 90 seconds on offense, putting so much pressure on the Sharks they could have made diamonds. But again, nothing was getting by Jones. While he remained solid, the defense in front of him was starting to crumble. All the Kings momentum was getting to them, and thanks to Dustin Brown, a second goal brought them to within one of their objective. They still had plenty of time, over half the period, but they didn’t waste it. Or their next power play. Kopitar’s first rebound Jones had saved easily, but as the Kings settled the puck and changed up the play a little, he got another and that one tied with game, with 7:08 remaining. The goal made him the first King to hit double digits in goals this season. That seemed to snap the Sharks out of their funk, unfortunately, and for the rest of the period we swung from exciting chances to scary chances at either end. The Kings could have closed it out when the Sharks took a too many men penalty (I *had* to laugh), mostly thanks to Roy standing up to Thornton on the blue line, but it went to OT anyways, in which despite the carryover penalty, they couldn’t even get a shot off. Marleau had the game winning goal on his stick as it turned out, his 99th GWG, and while the Kings were happy to battle back, Coach McLellan wasn’t too thrilled they got themselves into that situation in the first place. And with Martinez out for the foreseeable future – he took a skate to the arm – it’ll be interesting to see what they bring to the red hot Islanders on Wednesday.