Kings Disappoint at Home Again

Home sweet . . . Ottawa? Toronto? Raleigh, N.C.?

Little is sweet about Staples Center for the Kings, whose homecoming from a four-game, three-victory sojourn into the mild, mild East showed that little had changed in their absence.

Errors still abounded Thursday night. So did shaky goaltending and indifferent effort. Bad bounces didn’t help, which is why Derek Morris’ second-period goal gave the Calgary Flames a lead en route to their 3-0 victory before 13,616.

“Playing at Staples Center hasn’t been the advantage we’d like it to be,” Coach Andy Murray said. “Then again, we need to play more inspired hockey than we have been in the last few games.”

That lack of inspiration was countered by Calgary, a polar-opposite team on this night.

“I think we probably caught them after a long trip,” Coach Don Hay said.

Goalie Fred Brathwaite stopped 21 King shots, and the Flame defense swept the area clean in front of him. Then again, second and third shots only come when you crash the net, and the Kings crashed little on Thursday night.

Still, they kept things even until Morris’ goal, which came on a Calgary power play, with 17:06 gone in the second period.

Anything that could have gone wrong did on the goal. In order of error:

* Mattias Norstrom’s clearing pass was snagged by Calgary’s Phil Housley near the blue line, and that kept the puck in the attacking zone when the Flames should have been chasing it the other way;

* Two passes later, Morris launched a shot from well outside that deflected off the stick of King penalty killer Eric Belanger;

* The wood changed the direction to between goalie Jamie Storr’s legs, which were open with his stick fanned to field an outside shot.

“I don’t know if I moved the stick of not,” Belanger said. “I was just trying to stop the puck.”

Said Storr: “I was sliding across [to stop the shot] and my stick was going that way. I tried to get my legs close together.”

Too late: 1-0.

Still, it offered an opportunity to put a dent in their 0-14-1-1 record when trailing after two periods.

It also gave them a chance to reverse a trend in which they were 2-4-1-1 in their last eight home games.

It even gave them a chance to move into an eighth-place tie with Edmonton, with three games in hand.

Strike three.

“We’re approaching these four games [before the All-Star Game] like the playoffs,” Murray said beforehand.

Maybe he shouldn’t have said it. The Kings haven’t won a playoff game since 1993.

Brathwaite was tested often early, turning back a shot by Rob Blake and rebound by Ziggy Palffy in the second minute; and watching a Jozef Stumpel to Bryan Smolinski to Palffy play go awry when the puck jumped over Palffy’s stick as he lined up in front of a virtually open net.

In the end though, form held, even on Calgary’s goal at 16:13 of the final period, scored when Storr’s attempt to clear the puck up the ice went awry.

“Mathieu Schneider told me to get it up the boards so they wouldn’t have to go back all the time and get the puck, because he and Rob [Blake] were playing most of the last period,” Storr said.

Lowry was waiting for the puck, picked it off and dropped it to Stillman, who sent it back to Lowry, who beat Storr.

Stillman’s empty-net goal with 1:54 to play finished things and sent what was left of the sparse crowd into the night, leaving a chorus of “boos” as their testimony to home-ice disadvantage.