Kings Donein a Big Hurry

Their coach’s angry words still burning in their ears from earlier in the day, the Kings went out Friday night and ...

Tanked again.

The Florida Panthers, last in the NHL in the overall standings and winless at home, scored three goals in the first 51/2 minutes and made them stand up in a 3-2 victory in front of 18,093 in the National Car Rental Center.

King Coach Andy Murray, still smarting from Thursday night’s 3-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, had lit into his team in a morning meeting.

“I really let them have it,” he said before the game. “I told them, ‘I thought we were the talk of the NHL at the end of last season for all the right reasons. Now we’re the talk of the NHL for all the wrong reasons.”’

The talk will only grow louder after the Kings lost for the second night in a row with their new all-star center, Jason Allison, acquired from the Boston Bruins on Wednesday in a trade that sent Glen Murray and Jozef Stumpel to the Bruins.

And there were indications from defenseman Mathieu Schneider that Andy Murray’s message to his players might not have had the desired effect.

“Guys were moping around all day, upset about last night,” said Schneider, not addressing Murray’s address to the team specifically but talking generally. “You can’t afford to be that way. The league’s too good.”

Was their energy lacking?

“Not so much the energy as much as confidence,” Schneider said. “You could just see it in the dressing room [that] guys were still a little down. It was just a general low feeling in the dressing room.

“You can’t afford to have that. You’ve got to be ready to play every night. Soon as the game’s over, you have got to forget about it. Learn from your mistakes and go on. We didn’t do that. We came out, and it took us three goals to wake up.”

For the third time in their last five road games, the Kings gave up a goal in the first minute, Bill Lindsay scoring for the Panthers only 29 seconds into the game.

Defenseman Jaroslav Modry coughed up the puck in the King zone after being belted in the corner by the Panthers’ Jason Wiemer, leading to the goal.

Then, with Ken Belanger and Mattias Norstrom in the penalty box for the Kings, teammate Eric Belanger had a clearing pass intercepted, leading to a power-play goal by the Panthers’ Kristian Huselius at 3:43.

At 5:27, with Norstrom still in the penalty box serving a double-minor for high-sticking Ivan Novoseltsev, the Panthers scored another power-play goal, Wiemer firing a shot past goaltender Felix Potvin from the slot.

“I killed us there,” Norstrom said of his four-minute penalty.

It was the Panthers’ fourth power-play goal in their last two games.

The Kings rallied, getting a first-period goal from Steve Heinze and a second-period power-play goal from Schneider, whose shot from the right point came off an assist from Allison, giving the former Bruin his first point as a King.

In the final minute, though, Schneider and Adam Deadmarsh missed open-net shots and the Kings, never won in seven games against the Panthers in South Florida, were left to ponder their seventh loss in 11 games, six by one goal.

“It’s always frustrating losing, of course,” said Norstrom, their captain. “On the other hand, we know we’re close. It’s not that we’re getting outplayed and we have to change a lot of things.

“We’ve got to see the light at the end of the tunnel because we’re not playing awful hockey. We’re just playing good enough to lose. We’ve got to come up with something to be able to win these close hockey games because that is a sign of a good hockey team when you win these close contests.”

The Kings are 1-3 on their longest trip of the season, with games still to play against the Carolina Hurricanes on Sunday and the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday before they return home. They are last in the Pacific Division.

“When things go bad, they go bad,” Schneider said. “All teams hit a patch like this during the season. Hopefully, this is it for us and we get it over with early. Even with the way we’re playing and the way things are going, we’ve been in every game and had a chance to win.

“It’s frustrating, but we get a couple of wins and we’re going to be a better team for it the rest of the season.”