Kings Come Up Empty but Don’t Feel That Way

The law of averages is catching up to the Kings.

After winning a few games they shouldn’t have last month because of a lack of effort, the Kings played hard and well for the second day in a row Thursday night but still suffered an another shutout loss, 3-0 to the Philadelphia Flyers and goaltender Sean Burke before 19,612 at CoreStates Center.

In being shut out in consecutive games for the first time since 1975, the Kings outshot the Flyers, as they did against Buffalo in Wednesday’s 4-0 loss.

“We know when we play well and when we don’t,” King defenseman Sean O’Donnell said. “At Buffalo we had 37 shots and another 30 or so tonight. They just aren’t going in.”

Against the Sabres, goaltender Dominik Hasek essentially defeated the Kings by himself. On Thursday, Burke seemed to do the same.

In making his third consecutive start in place of injured Ron Hextall, Burke made a strong push to be the Flyers’ top goalie for the playoffs by stopping 29 shots for his 16th career shutout.

He received enough offensive help over a 55-second span in the final minute of the first period. Alexandre Daigle scored a power-play goal at 19:03 to put the Flyers up 1-0 and then at 19:58, Joel Otto was credited with a goal when he deflected in a desperation shot by Dan McGillis past King goaltender Jamie Storr.

“I really thought that we had great jump out there tonight,” King Coach Larry Robinson said. “We probably played our two best games over the last 2 1/2 weeks but don’t have a goal to show for it.

“I thought that we outplayed them in the first period, but we made one poor decision in our zone for one goal and their second score was basically a fluke goal. I can’t be discouraged with [the losses]. We worked extremely hard the last two games.”

Storr was solid in making 21 saves, but he didn’t have a chance to stop Philadelphia’s first goal when Chris Gratton and Mike Sillinger stretched the Kings’ defense with crisp passes that resulted with Daigle knocking in the puck from the right side of the crease.

The Flyers, still playing without forwards Eric Lindros (post-concussion syndrome) as well as Dainius Zubrus (serving two-game league suspension for slashing), then got lucky for their second goal.

McGillis was stuck with the puck near the Kings’ blue line when he launched a shot toward the goal. But because the Flyers had so many players in front of the net, Otto was able to barely get his stick on the puck, which deflected off King defenseman Garry Galley over Storr’s shoulder into the net with 1.2 seconds remaining in the period.

The Kings went into intermission with a 10-7 edge in shots on goal but took the ice for the second period behind by two goals against a Philadelphia team that had lost only five times in the 26 previous games that they led after one period.

In a scoreless second period, the Kings again outshot the Flyers, 11-7. Ian Laperriere had his shot from the blue line hit inside the left post and Galley, Russ Courtnall and Yanic Perreault each had attempts blocked by Burke.

Philadelphia put the game away in the third period when Shjon Podein scored on a breakaway at 6:40. Storr left the net to make a good poke-check on the play, but Podein recovered to score while sliding on his stomach from the left wing.

So with eight games remaining in the regular season, the Kings’ priorities have changed slightly after a lengthy stretch of listless hockey.

“Our last two games have been probably our best over the last couple of weeks,” Storr said. “We’re not coming up with the two points, but there is a lot of positives. We’re still missing a few players to injuries, but that’s no reason for us losing. We’re making plays that on other days the puck will go in. We want to get on a roll going into the playoffs and we feel that we’re playing better.”