A Blanking Statement

As they slipped further behind in the playoff race Saturday night with a 2-0 loss to the St. Louis Blues, the Kings sounded a curious rallying cry.

We won’t quit.

The curious thing was, nobody had suggested that they would.

Still, after being shut out for the second time in three games and falling a season-high 11 points out of the playoff race, the Kings seemed to feel compelled to address the subject, answering a question that was never asked.

“Nobody’s going to quit in this dressing room,” said goaltender Felix Potvin, whose solid effort was wasted as the Kings failed to put any of their 17 shots past the Blues’ Fred Brathwaite. “We’ll keep battling and find a way.”

One third of their season complete, the Kings have won eight of 28 games and been shut out four times. Only three teams have fewer than their 22 points, which places them 13th in the Western Conference.

Since Nov. 17, when Coach Andy Murray told them they’d have to win the equivalent of 40 of their last 64 games to make the playoffs, they are 3-3-3, their best nine-game stretch of the season, and yet lost ground in the playoff race.

“We came in here to get two points and we came out with nothing,” captain Mattias Norstrom said of the latest setback. “It’s an awful feeling. But you don’t see a team that’s anywhere close to quitting. You see a team with a lot of battle in it.”

Also, unfortunately for the Kings, a team that isn’t scoring.

After playing to a 1-1 tie Thursday night at Staples Center, the Kings and Blues were scoreless into the third period in front of 18,933 in the Savvis Center, the Kings having killed off five penalties while earning only one power play.

Then, after the Blues won a faceoff in the Kings’ zone, defenseman Al MacInnis wound up and ripped a slap shot from the blue line that eluded Potvin, giving the Blues the only goal they would need with 17:01 to play.

“It was going wide and it hit something and came back at me,” Potvin said. “I’m not sure what it hit--I’ll have to look at the video--but for sure it hit something.”

Midway through the period, with Brathwaite out of position as the Kings forced the action in a frantic attempt to score, Adam Deadmarsh tried to slip a pass through the crease to Jason Allison, who would have had a shot into an empty net. It was intercepted by winger Mike Keane, however, inches from the goal line.

“That’s kind of our luck right now,” said Deadmarsh, who is scoreless in five games since returning from an abdominal injury that sidelined him for four.

Dallas Drake, skating down the left side on a two-on-one breakaway, scored the Blues’ second goal, banging a shot off the inside of Potvin’s left leg and effectively putting the game out of reach for the Kings with 3:13 remaining.

After the Kings had scored only one goal in their previous eight periods, it was clearly asking too much to expect them to score two in little more than three minutes.

With Ziggy Palffy, Mathieu Schneider and Randy Robitaille out of the lineup because of injuries, the King offense has ground to a halt.

“We’re not scoring,” Deadmarsh said. “I don’t know the reasons we’re not. It seems like we’re crashing the net pretty good. There just doesn’t seem to be much laying around the net to clean up. The shot comes to the net and the puck disappears. Hopefully, some rebounds will start kicking out for us.”

Brathwaite, who had a brief tryout with the Kings before the 1992-93 season, swallowed up most of the Kings’ shots in his first shutout of the season, helping the Blues to their sixth consecutive home victory and ninth in 10 games.

When he didn’t, his defensemen were there to lend a hand.

For the Kings, blanked in the first game of a three-game trip, it doesn’t figure to get any easier. At Chicago tonight, they’ll play a Blackhawk team that has lost only once in 15 home games.