The Kings are running out of time to secure the final wild-card playoff spot in the West, and their 6-2 loss to the Utah Mammoth doesn't help their cause.
There is bad news and good news to report on the Kings’ push for a fifth straight playoff berth. First, the bad. With a chance to move into a playoff position Saturday, the Kings came out flat and were routed 6-2 by the Utah Mammoth at Crypto.
com Arena, leaving them a point out of postseason berth with nine games to play. But wait, it gets worse. Saturday’s game was the first of a seven-game homestand, matching the Kings’ longest in 15 years, and that’s not the advantage it would appear to be. Only the Vancouver Canucks and New York Rangers have been worse at home than the Kings this season. The Kings are also bucking history. Eighteen of their losses have come in either overtime or a shootout and just one team — the 2012 Florida Panthers — have lost that many games after regulation and made the playoffs since the shootout was adopted 21 years ago. If the Kings had won just half of those overtime games, they’d be a point back of the Pacific Division-leading Ducks. Instead, they appear to be going backward at the worst possible time. With Saturday’s loss, the most one-sided in more than a month, the Kings have dropped seven of their last 10 games and nine of 14 since D.J. Smith replaced Jim Hiller behind the bench. And suddenly there’s traffic in their rear-view mirror with four teams bunched no more than three points behind them in the standings. Despite all that, the Kings took the ice against Utah with a chance to move back into a playoff spot, only to play with little urgency, falling behind for good less than 2½ minutes after the opening faceoff on the first of two goals by fourth-line winger Alexander Kerfoot. Defenseman John Marino started the sequence with a takeaway in the neutral zone. After feeding Kerfoot at center ice, Marino got the puck back as he crossed the blue line, then skated into the center of the right circle before threading a pass to a wide-open Kerfoot on the edge of the crease for the easy tap-in. Logan Cooley doubled the lead with 3:27 left in the first period, collecting a long pass that Mikhail Sergachev ricocheted off the end boards and lifting it by Kings’ goalie Darcy Kuemper. Anze Kopitar got one back for the Kings less than 90 seconds later, redirecting an Adrian Kempe shot from the high slot. But Cooley matched that, making it 3-1 Utah with an acrobatic power-play goal nine seconds before the first intermission. The Kings had a golden chance to get back in the game midway through the second period when Utah took penalties two minutes and 41 seconds apart. But the Mammoth killed both and 16 seconds after the teams were back at full strength Kerfoot, given way too much time and space on the edge of the crease, made it 4-1 Utah with his fifth goal of the season. Less than four minutes later Nick Schmaltz scored four seconds into Utah’s second power play. With that the rout was on and Kuemper’s night was nearly over, with the Kings changing goaltenders between periods. Kuemper made 11 saves on 16 shots. Kempe’s 27th goal of the season and Jack McBain’s ninth for the Mammoth closed out the scoring in the third period. Now for the good news — and there is some. Despite the loss, the Kings are still just a point out of the second wild-card berth — with two of their final games coming against Nashville, the team that currently owns that playoff berth. Win both and the Kings, despite all their struggles, could go into the final five games holding a playoff spot. What’s more, a wild card may no longer be the Kings’ best — or only — shot at the postseason. The Vegas Knights, the team directly ahead of the Kings in the Pacific Division standings, entered Saturday having lost seven of their last 10, whittling their lead to three points in the battle for the division’s third and final postseason berth.
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