March 5th, 2017

Another game the Kings needed got away from them on Saturday night at Staples.  The Kings fell behind 4-0, but their rally fell short as they lost 4-3 to Vancouver.

Sven Baertschi scored twice, Ryan Miller made 41 saves and the Vancouver Canucks ended a four-game losing streak.

Trevor Lewis and Anze Kopitar each scored a power-play goal, Alec Martinez scored a short-handed goal and Ben Bishop made 17 saves in his home debut for Los Angeles, which missed out on a chance to move three points ahead of St. Louis for the second wild card in the Western Conference.

In typical Kings fashion, LA outshot their opponent 44-21, and dominated the possession numbers as well.  The Kings even won the special teams battle, scoring two power play goals, and not giving up any to Vancouver.

However, LA continued to have problems 5-on-5.  “On the score sheet, we may be close, but really the first two periods, it was nowhere near close enough to our game, and nowhere near close to being good enough,” Kopitar said.

The Kings were victimized by a few unfortunate deflections against them, but they have little room for error left.   LA continues game 3 of its 7 game home stand on Thursday against Nashville.