Numbers Deceiving for Kings

With apologies to Mark Twain, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and shots on goal. And the Kings have been the biggest liars in town for about a month now.

For the ninth time in 12 games, the Kings outshot the opposition Thursday night, and for the ninth time in 12 games they were losers, this time to St. Louis, which got a power-play goal from Scott Young in the third period to earn a 3-2 win at Staples Center.

Overall, the Kings had a 26-16 lead in shots, but the Blues were much more opportune. They needed only three shots to earn a 2-1 first-period lead.

“It doesn’t happen too often for us,” Blues defenseman Chris Pronger said of being outshot and winning. “We just found a way to win.”

And to move atop the league with 60 points, the reward for a 6-0-2 run.

“Well, it’s still a long season and a lot can happen,” Pronger said. “As we’ve seen before, you can be on top one minute and on the bottom the next.”

Witness their opponents. The Kings were among the NHL leaders a month ago but are 2-9-1 in those last 12 games and sinking like a stone in the West.

“In this streak of misery we’re on right now, [we are] trying to grind up some offense,” King Coach Andy Murray said. “St. Louis is on a roll right now and things are happening for them that happen when you are playing that well. We have to earn our breaks, and we have not gotten them yet.”

The Kings began the game with a physical presence that was punctuated by a Rob Blake check of St. Louis’ Jochen Hecht that had most of the announced 16,278 on their feet.

And the Kings held the Blues shotless for the game’s first 13:30 until Pavol Demitra got one through. The Kings owned a 1-0 lead on a shot by Glen Murray that glanced off Bryan Smolinski’s stick and past goalie Roman Turek, the league leader in goals-against average at 2.05, but left off the World team for the NHL All-Star game.

Turek said after the game that he would not go to Toronto, even if named as a replacement for Dominik Hasek on the team.

It was that kind of night for Murray, who first lost the goal, then left the game at 9:30 of the opening period when he was banged into the boards and suffered a bruised chest.

The 1-0 lead held up for most of the period, but the Blues countered with a goal on their second shot of the game. It came in clear ice by Jamal Mayers at 17:23, when he took advantage of a defensive mixup between Jere Karalahti and Bob Corkum.

And only 1:26 later, Lubos Bartecko deflected a shot by Demitra past King goalie Stephane Fiset for a 2-1 lead.

It was only the third shot of the period by the Blues. The Kings had six.

It got slightly better in the second, when St. Louis was held shotless for 12:39 until, again, Demitra ended the drought.

But it took the Kings 19:31 to tie the score when Garry Galley broke out of the penalty box--where he was serving time for holding--and passed to Ziggy Palffy, who pushed it to Smolinski, who scored his second goal of the game.

Then with Sean O’Donnell in the box because of an interference call, Young set up at the goal, staved off a shove by Karalahti and had his skate in the way of a blue-line shot by Al McInnis that gave the Blues a 3-2 lead.

It was only the 12th shot of the game for St. Louis, and at the time the Kings had 17. But that’s a statistic, and the bottom line is that it gave the Blues a win.

And the Kings yet another loss.