Kings Wait Too Late to Begin Their Charge

In case you’ve forgotten, this is a Kings’ team that beat Detroit only a week ago. That beat Philadelphia in the last home stand. That beat Phoenix at Phoenix and Pittsburgh at Pittsburgh. That beat Buffalo and Colorado at the Great Western Forum.

It’s easy to forget.

The Kings played 30 seconds of hockey in the first two periods Thursday night, then turned it on in the third with power-play goals by Garry Galley and Craig Johnson in a too-little, too-late, 4-3 loss to Nashville.

Too little, because Sebastien Bordeleau had picked up two goals in a second period that established a 4-1 Nashville lead.

Too late, because even with the Kings outshooting Nashville, 18-2, in the third period, it wasn’t enough.

In their 32nd season, the Kings have practice pucks older than the Predators, an expansion outfit that was a gleam in Tennessee’s eye less than a year ago.

The Predators have 50 points and have closed to within one of the Kings, which is of no significance whatsoever in the playoff race because both teams are so far out of it that sleep is no longer being lost in San Jose and Edmonton, the bottom rungs of the postseason ladder in the West.

The Kings have an 0-2 record against Nashville, which has won 10 games on the road in its first season.

Two of them have come at the Forum.

The Predators are averaging 2.3 goals a game but have seven goals against the Kings.

The Kings, who outshot the Mighty Ducks, 34-14, the night before in losing 2-1 and skated for most of two periods Thursday as though the Forum ice was mud. They drew boos that you could hear individually from many in a crowd advertised as 9,686, a number inflated by approximately a third.

They kept it close for almost half a period, trading shots with the Predators until Nashville got a breakout with Cliff Ronning and Sergei Krivokrasov making the Kings’ Doug Bodger the defenseman in a two-on-one sandwich.

Ronning got the shot, which was turned away by King goalie Jamie Storr, but John Slaney steamed up the middle to bang home the rebound for a 1-0 lead.

It became 2-0 when Bordeleau banked in a short-handed goal off the left leg of King defenseman Steve Duchesne at 7:18 of the second period. After a missed power-play shot by Luc Robitaille, Nashville suddenly found itself in something of a rarity: a three-on-two rush on an opponent’s power play. Bordeleau’s second goal made it 3-0.

The Kings played perhaps 30 seconds of offensive hockey in the first two periods, and they resulted in Donald Audette’s 13th goal of the season.

Craig Johnson won a puck in the corner, slid it to Olli Jokinen, who centered it to Audette for the score.

Within seconds, the Kings had another run, with Glen Murray’s shot hitting the post, but Nashville took care of anything resembling momentum with a goal by Patric Kjellberg only 55 seconds after Audette’s.

From there, it became a matter of accounting, with Nashville getting unaccustomed practice at protecting a three-goal lead with tenacious forechecking, disrupting a King offense that already is pretty disrupted.

The Kings had three goals in as many games before Thursday night. They have lost three of their last four games.

They began their run to make it close with 18 seconds left in a third-period power play. Galley took a pass on the right wing from Audette and scored at 6:45 of the third period.

The Kings added another power-play goal at 12:58 after Nashville’s Joel Boucherd was sent off for hammering Sandy Moger. The Kings began the power play with something of a makeshift unit, including Audette, Johnson and Jokinen as the forwards.

Only Audette among those regularly starts on the power play.

It worked.

Audette sent a pass to Duchesne, who fired it on Nashville goalie Mike Dunham. Johnson was there for the rebound to make it 4-3.