Kings Play the Perfect Host

It had all the symptoms of a disease that had plagued the Kings before Christmas, when they were the kind of hosts that turned teams such as Atlanta and Tampa Bay into world beaters.

And were the kind of road team that made expansion Minnesota and Columbus look like Original Six franchises.

The Kings insist they didn’t play down to their competition again Thursday night, but third-period power-play goals by Ray Whitney and Viktor Kozlov gave Florida a 4-3 victory before an announced 14,137 at Staples Center.

That’s Florida, last place in the Southeast Division with eight victories.

“We didn’t play down, we dominated them,” insisted King goalie Steve Passmore. “They won because their goalie outplayed our goalie.”

The Kings outshot Florida, 49-19.

Passmore has given up 10 goals in the last two King games, both losses.

“They shouldn’t get four goals in 19 shots,” King Coach Andy Murray said, adding that a coaching staff review of the situation will determine who starts Saturday’s game against Calgary.

Jamie Storr might want to warm up for his turn on what has been a goalie merry-go-round this season.

“Their goalie” was Trevor Kidd, who faced a King assault and heard three shots hit posts behind him and carom out.

“I got a little lucky at times,” Kidd said. “We hadn’t played that well before this. We have a lot of ground to make up.”

An entire continent, actually, but games like the one of Thursday night and gracious opponents like the Kings will make it easier. Florida’s victory was its first in a game in which it had given up more than one goal all season, now 40 games along.

“I knew when it was 16 or 17 games, but I didn’t know it had gone that far,” Kidd said, an astonished look on his face.

It helped that they were playing the Kings, and apparently it helped that they were playing them at Staples Center. In only its second season of use, it had the look of a budding house of horrors for the opposition, but it has become a guest house of late. The Kings have lost four of their last five games at home, and earned only a tie with the New York Rangers in the other.

All of that tends to make a math lesson held by Murray earlier in the day ring hollow.

“I told them that there were 50 more points available at home,” Murray said.

Well, there go two of them.

If the Kings are a better team than a year ago, it’s hard to prove it by the standings. At the halfway point last season, they had 45 points, good for seventh place in the Western Conference. At the halfway point this season, which was celebrated Thursday night with goals by Glen Murray, Mathieu Schneider and Ziggy Palffy, they remained stuck at 42 points.

That’s bad enough for ninth in the West, which is where teams start looking at the playoffs.

The collapse came late in the second period. Until its final minute, the Kings were controlling the Panthers, who have been eminently controllable all season.

“I don’t think they had a scoring chance in the second until then,” Andy Murray said.

But after John Jakopin fired away from long range, Ivan Novoseltsev went to the net in search of a rebound.

“It would have helped if I hadn’t put the rebound right in his chest,” Passmore said.

Novoseltsev pushed it in the net just before tangling with the Kings’ Jere Karalahti. The two fell on Passmore.

By then, the Kings had outshot Florida, 37-14, and had only a scoreboard standoff to show for it.

Whitney’s third-period goal came four seconds into a Florida power play.

“It was a knuckleball and I saw it,” said Passmore, who added that he should have stopped the shot.

And others.

“I’m not going to make any excuses,” he said.

The lead became 4-2 only 1:50 later when Kozlov blasted home a puck, mitigated only slightly by Ziggy Palffy’s 22nd goal of the season. It was scored in his first game after an eight-game, injury-induced hiatus. Palffy’s goal came when he tipped in a long-range pass from Jozef Stumpel.

In the end, though, it wasn’t enough. Once 7-2-3 at Staples, the Kings are now 7-5-4-1.