Kings lose again to the Sharks, 1-0
They drop their home opener at Staples Center a day after losing in San Jose.
These being the Kings, who are still traveling a cursed course set by an excessively curved stick, a felonious owner and decades of bad drafting, there could be no silver lining to their 1-0 loss to San Jose on Sunday without a curtain of clouds.
Playing their Staples Center opener to complete a home-and-home set with the Sharks, the Kings won many of the small battles they had badly lost Saturday in a 3-1 defeat at San Jose.
But they didn't win the game, the difference being a wrist shot that Lukas Kaspar pinpointed over Jason LaBarbera's pad from the right-wing boards, catching the Kings' goaltender by surprise at 9:56 of the second period. Kaspar is a left-handed shooter and he placed the shot in an area above LaBarbera's pad that the goalie called a "dead zone."
LaBarbera faced only 19 shots by the Sharks, who tired toward the end of their third game in four nights but emerged a perfect 3-0. The Kings, held to 13 shots Saturday, took 21 on Sunday and saw that as a good sign.
"We had some fight," LaBarbera said. "We were a better team than we were [Saturday]."
That might turn out to be small consolation because they lost prize defenseman Jack Johnson to what Coach Terry Murray called "an upper-extremity injury" in the league-endorsed practice of being vague about players' infirmities.
Johnson was hurt in the first period while trying to knock the puck out of the air just inside the Kings' blue line. He played only one shift in the second period before retreating to the locker room, and Murray said he would be evaluated by a doctor today.
Johnson told reporters that he was fine, but the angle of his left arm and his care in cradling it tightly against his body suggested otherwise. Murray said he hadn't been told the extent of the damage.
"Hopefully it isn't serious," he said.
Costly and ill-timed losses are almost the norm for the Kings. But on Sunday they experienced a degree of misfortune unusual even for them: they had two goals disallowed in the second period, meaning they have had more goals waved off than they've scored in their first two games.
The first wipeout came at 11:08 of the second period, when the on-ice officials ruled Jarret Stoll had interfered with Sharks goaltender Brian Boucher in the crease.
The second incident went to video review upstairs at Staples Center and at the NHL's offices in Toronto. The verdict was that Matt Moulson had used a deliberate kicking motion with his right skate to get the puck past Boucher at 16:02.
