Waking up with the Kings: February 8

Woof. In a performance that was two-thirds of a carbon copy of the game two days prior, the Kings engineered a bevy of quality chances early but were felled by mistakes and poor individual performances in their second consecutive 5-0 blowout loss. Whereas the Capitals are evolving once again into a league juggernaut, the Lightning are at the opposite end of the spectrum, though, to be fair to the opponents, the Eastern Conference is much more competitive this season, and Tampa Bay was coming off what some had thought was their best performance of the season in a territorially dominant shootout win over Anaheim on Saturday. That doesn’t excuse a 5-0 loss or a 10-0 aggregate score, the most lopsided two-game margin of defeat since losing 5-2 at St. Louis on December 21, 2006 and 7-0 at Nashville two nights later. “Uncharacteristic” was used to describe the loss to Washington, given the team’s checking performance Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia, but cringes are more than warranted when the game gets away from Los Angeles two outings in a row.

The Kings opened up the game with a high-octane start, peppering a very good Ben Bishop with 19 shots in the first 20 minutes. The Lightning’s best defenseman, Victor Hedman, was taken off the ice on a hooking call 4:15 into the game, and Los Angeles was able to set up shop in the offensive end. Anze Kopitar can’t really be faulted for registering three shots on goal as part of five shot attempts and may have been the team’s best player in the first 20 minutes, but he passed off what appeared from upstairs to be a very good shooting opportunity from just to the right side of the mid-to-high slot, deferring to Drew Doughty with a no-look pass for a shot that Bishop slid to his right to stop. It’s not particularly fair to call too much attention to Kopitar, who was about as good as anyone on the Kings at pushing the play and generating chances, but he’s still stuck on one power play goal this season, the team wants him to have the puck on his stick in the center ice and shoot more, and had the team been able to open the scoring early, the game all of a sudden features a whole different complexion. Instead, during four-on-four play some two and a half minutes later, Jonathan Drouin took advantage of Tyler Toffoli as one of two players back, and when the L.A. forward didn’t step up to challenge the skilled winger, Drouin unleashed a blistering wristshot from the bottom of the left circle that beat Budaj short-side. The shot was a beauty, but it was also preventable and stoppable.

And then the game got away as rush chances led to four of the home team’s five goals. Darryl Sutter didn’t see any sort of commonality linking the rush chances, but rather cited poor individual execution, and he was also critical of certain team veterans for their road performances this season. Whether the Kings lost 1-0, 5-0 or 21-0 wasn’t of particular consequence. They failed to score. They’ve failed to score goals for nine consecutive regulation periods and their power play is now 0-for-8 on the road trip when timely first period power plays goals could’ve led to different game trajectories in both Washington and Tampa Bay. It hasn’t been for getting beat significantly in possession or the run of play; Los Angeles has not had as many Grade-A chances as the opposition over the last two games, but the total distribution of the scoring chances over the last two games has been even. With a record of 18-5-2 when scoring first and 12-1-1 when leading after the first period, it’s clear that the Kings will be much better served by scoring the game’s first goal.