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
– Edmundson gets caught in the O zone
– Spence gets walkedAll in the first like 5 minutes of the game. Tell me again why Clarke is sitting for consecutive games? #GoKingsGo
— Raz Devraj (@razdevraj) January 31, 2025
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….
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The Hockey Writers…