Kings at Stars: Ringing in the New Year to the Sound of Sadness

So, the LA Kings ended 2013 not with a bang, but with — blah, blah, you know the saying. They’re losing losers right now.

Remember how they started December? They were knocking teams down left and right. It started to seem like, whether they were at home or on the road, the Kings were a tough team get down. Obviously, the only way to cap off such a nice roll was to drop four straight games at the end of the month.

Got me and Lestat all dressed up with nothing to celebrate.

The Dallas Stars set the pace early in the first period. They outshot the Kings 6-1, but after killing a penalty to Matt Greene four minutes into the game, the Kings found momentum and started spending more time on the attack.

More penalties from both teams gave the Kings an opportune 4-on-3 man advantage a little more than halfway through the period. Mike Richards set his main squeeze Jeff Carter up for a birthday goal. Richards took a shot from the point that popped off Carter’s stick and right over goaltender Kari Lehtonen.

Jordan Nolan ruined the New Year’s Eve celebration by taking a high-sticking penalty in the offensive zone. Even though the Stars had a power play ranked 29th heading into the game, they capitalized and tied the score. However, by the end of the first, the Kings were leading in shots on goal, 14-13.

Willie Mitchell kept the New Year’s Eve penalty party rocking by going off for delay of game 30 seconds into the middle frame. The rest of his team killed it off, luckily, and got back to trying to generate offense. Nolan even got cute with a move that could’ve been a nice scoring chance had he been able to get a shot off.

Dwight King would’ve completed that.

Oh, well! If they can’t score more goals, they might as well take more penalties. Kyle Clifford, step on up to the box.

Richards and Carter had a wonderful 2-on-1 opportunity to give the Kings a shorthanded goal, but they couldn’t quite make magic happen again for the birthday boy. Instead, the Stars took everything to the other end of the ice, and Tyler Seguin’s shot hit Scrivens but went up into the net.

Then the Kings fell to pieces for several minutes. I don’t really know how else to describe it.

Basically.

Erik Cole put the exclamation point on this disaster. He scored his second goal of the night, proving that the Kings were so gross that the Stars didn’t even need to be on the power play that time.

Despite that mess, the Kings came out with more determination in the third period. The top line produced for the team, with Anze Kopitar netting his 13th of the year. Jeff Carter bagged a second point for himself in the form of the primary assist.

The Kings hit the post two separate times during the third period, and the sound of the puck pinging as it hits metal will haunt them right into 2014. They couldn’t find a way to tie the game, though Doughty helped them secure their sixth minor penalty. That’s gotta be worth something, right?

To be fair, Doughty’s holding penalty on Valeri Nichushkin wasn’t a bad penalty to take. Nichushkin sped into the Kings zone and would’ve had a great opportunity to score, but because it was penalty number six, it still sucked. Stop taking penalties and handing teams games! How hard is that? Impossible apparently.

The Kings made a strong effort to tie it up with the extra attacker in the dying minutes, but Lehtonen held on to their one especially dangerous chance. Kings lost 3-2.

It was annoying that they lost to the Stars at Staples last Monday, but whatever. It happens. Now the Kings have gone 0-3 on their current road trip, and their next opponent is the St. Louis Blues. On one hand, the Kings usually play pretty well against the Blues these days. On the other hand, the Kings are back to failing to put together goals, and the Blues have the second best goals per game average right now. Get stoked!

@rvp29 Pretty sad that their strongest game the last 2 weeks is the one where they scored 0 goals. Hahahaha… *cries* -C

— THX BUD (@thxbud) January 1, 2014

Technically it’s been a week and a half. My bad. It doesn’t change that the Kings have earned zero points since Christmas.

Happy New Year, everybody!