Kings battle back but fall to Panthers, 3-2

The Kings began a stretch Saturday that will see them play seven times in 11 days, with all but one of those games coming against playoff contenders.

That’s a span that could go a long way toward determining the team’s own postseason future. But it’s one that got off to a bad start with Aleksander Barkov’s tiebreaking goal 15 seconds into the third period that lifted the Florida Panthers to a 3-2 win and keeping the Kings two points back Calgary in the race for the Western Conference’s final playoff berth.

“We’re trying to make the playoffs here. Every point counts,” said Tanner Pearson, whose second-period goal capped a Kings rally from a 2-0 deficit. “We did a good job battling back. But it wasn’t enough.

“Letting these points slip away is not good for us.”

Florida’s red-hot Jonathan Huberdeau got the scoring started with five minutes left in the first period, blasting a wrister just under the crossbar from the top of the left faceoff circle. It was Huberdeau’s fourth goal — to go with four assists — in six games since returning from a preseason Achilles injury.

The Panthers scored their second goal 74 seconds into the second period when Reilly Smith’s centering pass from behind the net found Jussi Jokinen unattended at the top of the slot. Jokinen took advantage of the defensive mistake, settling the puck and then beating Kings goalie Peter Budaj to his glove side for his ninth goal of the season.

The Kings then answered with two goals of their own over a six-minute span to tie the score at 2-2.

Dwight King got the first, chopping at a loose puck to the left of the net and knocking it just inside the post during a scramble that ended with Kings center Nick Shore and Florida defenseman Alex Petrovic laying in the cease. The Panthers challenged the goal claiming Shore, who had been shoved from behind by Florida’s Mark Pysyk, interfered with goalie Roberto Luongo after falling atop Petrovic.

But after a lengthy video review, the officials let the goal stand.

Pearson then tied the score with just more than eight minutes remaining before the second intermission, taking a pass from Jeff Carter near the left boards and deking his way through traffic before beating Luongo from the edge of the crease.

The goal was Pearson’s fourth in three games, giving him 19 for the season, while the assist was Carter’s fourth over that same span.

But Barkov snapped the tie seconds into the final period, stumbling as he redirected the puck just under Budaj’s skate from an impossible angle on the goal line near the right post.

The goal was his 14th of the season and fifth since being paired with Huberdeau and the ageless Jaromir Jagr, whose assist on that score gave him 1,902 points in his NHL career, second only to Wayne Gretzky.

“We chased the lead again,” said Coach Darryl Sutter, whose team fell behind Arizona, 2-0, in its previous game. “We battled back, played hard.

“You don’t want to be doing that all the time. It doesn’t work very well in this league. It’s nice to come back and tie the game. But then it’s not a great goal to start the third period.”

And it handed the Kings their second loss in a row and fourth in five games, the latest down in a roller-coaster season that has seen the team string together more than two consecutive wins just once since late November. Last season the team had five winning streaks of four or more games.

“We’ve had only one decent streak this year. Usually a team gets on a couple of those,” observed King, who said the next 10 days would be a good time to start another one.

“There’s [25] games,” he said. “We’re still right in the mix.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com

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