Kings at Blue Jackets: Too Much Cannon

The Kings did the right thing by starting the game with energy. They set the pace in the early minutes, rolling four remixed lines that saw Tanner Pearson playing Anze Kopitar’s left wing, and Jeff Carter and Mike Richards reunited on the second line. The Blue Jackets tried to throw the Kings momentum off by taking a penalty, but the Kings responded with a bizarrely competent power play. Not long after it ended, Dwight King snapped his goal-scoring drought and gave the Kings a 1-0 lead just shy of three minutes into regulation play.

Then the game ended, everyone went home, and everything was awesome.

Wait, what do you mean there are 57 more minutes left?

The Kings had another power play opportunity, but that one looked like a regular Kings PP — trash bag terrible. The Blue Jackets got a shorthanded chance. Regular day. On their own power play opportunity, the Blue Jackets scored. Tied 1-1.

Then with a minute left in the period, Jordan Nolan and Robyn Regehr completely failed to handle a stretch pass and Ryan Johansen scored his 19th of the season. Kings entered the intermission down 2-1.

Drew Doughty took a penalty early in the second to declare up front that the Kings weren’t done disgracing themselves. Unfortunately, nobody told Jeff Carter this, because he rode the boos of Blue Jackets fans right to the net and tied the game 2-2.

Things didn’t really turn around for the Kings. They continued to give up chances on defensive breakdowns. Bright spots were Anze Kopitar excellently breaking up a 2-on-1 and Alec Martinez showing that he was the only particularly competent defenseman for the away team by clearing a puck that literally made it right to the goal line.

After effectively draining the entirety of their good luck on that save, the Kings allowed two more goals within 1:25 of one another. One of them was an incredibly soft goal by Jones. End of two periods: 4-2 score.

In the third, the Kings allowed another goal, and then I got into a conversation with my roommate so I missed a lot and yet nothing at all offensively until there were three minutes left in the game. Robyn Regehr took a shot that deflected off James Wisniewski and behind Sergei Bobrovsky. This meant it was yet another game on the current road trip where a Kings depth player scored his first goal of the season, but because that made the score only 5-3, it was essentially useless.

The LA Kings have lost 10 of their last 15 games. This time they even managed to score more than one or two goals, but if it ain’t one thing that’s broken, it’s another. Sloppy defense and less than stellar goaltending allowed the Columbus Blue Jackets their seventh straight win.

There really isn’t a whole lot to say about this one. The Kings were outshot, out-chanced and lost a game they worked hard to lose. Now they come back to Southern California to attempt not to be that gross against the Anaheim Ducks. The Ducks have started to cool off some, so the outcome for that one could be slightly less predictable, but then again, the Kings just lost to the Blue Jackets.