Believe it or not, for the first time this season the Los Angeles Kings have lost three games in a row in regulation. That’s how good they have been up until this point. The Kings, who embarked on this five-game road trip last Saturday, are now four games in and remain winless with their latest defeat coming at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning. That’s now four straight losses, back-to-back games being shut out, losses in eight of their last 10, and they have scored two or fewer goals in 11 of their last 12.
What’s worse is the trend just keeps continuing. After every game over the month of January, more often than not, the stats get worse and worse and the streak of losses gets longer. It’s hard to think things can get much worse for the Kings who now see their once comfortable grip on a playoff spot slowly loosening as each game progresses.
You know usually after a loss, especially a shutout loss, it would be expected to see some sort of change or adjustment in hopes of finding a spark or something that wasn’t there in the game before. That wasn’t the case for head coach Jim Hiller and the Kings who ran with the exact same lineup and line combinations that were shut out against the Florida Panthers. Young defenseman Brandt Clarke was scratched for the second consecutive game and the Kings once again couldn’t get on the scoreboard.
– Anderson with a horrible pinch
— Raz Devraj (@razdevraj) January 31, 2025
– Edmundson gets caught in the O zone
– Spence gets walked
All in the first like 5 minutes of the game. Tell me again why Clarke is sitting for consecutive games? #GoKingsGo
Add Bad Luck to the List of Problems
It’s bad enough that generating offense has been such a struggle to begin with but even when the Kings are putting the puck in the net, they don’t count. Halfway through the second period, defenseman Jacob Moverare came out of the box just in time to pick up a loose puck heading into the Lightning end. He quickly dished one to a streaking Quinton Byfield who went in all alone on Andrei Vasilevsky and beat him with a quick shot glove-side. The Lightning challenged the goal for offside and ended up being successful.
“It’s just hard to believe right, that’s three and this one by a couple of inches […] what do you do,” said Hiller.
That was the third time in four games that a goal has been called back for the Kings. Alex Laferriere had one called back against the Columbus Blue Jackets and one against the Panthers. For a team that has insanely low confidence in their ability to score right now, having that happen multiple times does nothing but add to that voice in their head telling them they can’t do it. Bad luck is the last thing the Kings have needed over the course of this slump but it has seemed to be somewhat of a common theme throughout it.
“I don’t think our confidence is there right now. Obviously we have some chances to score some goals and we’re not capitalizing on our chances. At the end of the day, we’re just not playing well right now,” said defenseman Jordan Spence.
Related: Kings Takeaways: Shut Out 3-0 by Panthers in Doughty’s Debut
Hitting two crossbars feels just as bad. It’s like the Kings are right there a lot of the time but for whatever reason the end result never shows on the scoreboard. Whether it’s a bad bounce, a goal called back, a goalie playing out his mind, or hitting the iron, whatever it is, the Kings just can’t catch a break.
There are obviously other and more prominent reasons as to why the Kings aren’t scoring goals, a big one being passing up on the opportunity to create a good scoring chance due to their constant need to just throw pucks to the net, but it gets so much worse when the bounces never go your way and that’s what it feels like for the Kings right now.
It’s been tough. We’re not doing our job to score goals. At the end of the day, we have to score goals to win games and we’re not doing that,” said Spence.
Well, you can’t score less than zero goals so it’s only up from here right?
Who’s Buying Rittich Dinner?
To say David Rittich had one hell of a game would be an understatement. That’s how good he played against the Lightning. For a team that is so “structurally sound” defensively and doesn’t give up much, they sure got picked apart by the Lightning. The amount of high-danger chances and clear-cut shots the Lightning had on Rittich were endless. It could have been 4-0 by the end of the first period and that wasn’t even Rittich’s busiest period.
It’s almost routine now for the Kings to pretty much collapse in the second period and just allow teams to take it to them. After having the better looks in the first period, the Lightning came out and did the same thing in the second. There were wide-open, point-blank shots on Rittich all night long as well as multiple breakaways that he continued to deny. Shot after shot, grade-A after grade-A, Rittich did everything in his power and more to give his team a chance to win. He kept them in the game for all three periods and it wasn’t until five minutes were remaining in regulation that Lightning forward Brandon Hagel potted his second goal of the game to give the Lightning a 2-0 lead and all but seal the deal.
Rittich stopped 28 of the 30 shots he faced finishing with a .933 save percentage (SV%). It was his first game since Dec. 4 finishing a game with a SV% above .900. Rittich faced 13 high-danger shots and stopped 12 of them. It could have been a very ugly outcome for the Kings if Rittich didn’t show up to play. But again, no matter how good Rittich or Darcy Kuemper play, they can’t score goals.
“It’s pretty frustrating. The goalies are doing a really good job of keeping us in the game and everything. We’re not giving up a whole lot, it’s just like I said, putting the puck in the net. It falls on this group and me being on the top of that list to get the offense going,” said captain Anze Kopitar.
Anderson Leaves Game With Injury
It just goes from bad to worse for the Kings as their best defenseman all season, Mikey Anderson, left the game late in the first period after taking a shot to the hand. Anderson stepped up big time in Drew Doughty’s absence being the most reliable shutdown guy on the back end. Throughout the season, the Kings have never had a defensive group at full strength. First, it was Doughty who was out for over four months and then when he returned, Clarke was taken out of the lineup. No one knows the status of Anderson right now and although he will travel with the team to Carolina, Hiller did say postgame that he’s concerned. With Anderson potentially out, Clarke will likely draw back into the lineup but again, the Kings will have yet to ice their strongest possible D-core.
Just like Doughty left a big hole on the right side in which Vladislav Gavrikov did a great job stepping up to play on his opposite side, Anderson will leave a similar hole on the left side if he is to miss any time, in which Gavrikov will again be the one to fill that spot.
It didn’t get easier in Tampa Bay following the Kings’ loss to the Panthers the day before, and it sure isn’t going to get easier in Carolina when they take on a juiced-up Hurricanes squad that has just added Mikko Rantanen and Taylor Hall to the list of weapons they possess. It’s very possible and almost likely with the way things have gone that the Kings end this five-game road trip without registering a win.
