Kings Left Short-Changed

The Kings believed they were plugging a hole in their defense Tuesday when they traded for Dmitry Yushkevich of the Florida Panthers.

Instead, they created one.

Less than an hour before Wednesday night’s game against the Panthers, the veteran defenseman was found to have a ruptured blood vessel in his right eye and told he couldn’t play, leaving the Kings a man short.

They came up short on the scoreboard too, the Panthers ending an eight-game winless streak with a 5-2 victory in front of 16,782 at Staples Center.

Adding insult to injury: Jaroslav Bednar, traded from the Kings along with defenseman Andreas Lilja, assisted on two Panther goals.

Almost nothing went right for the Kings, who already were without injured regulars Jason Allison, Adam Deadmarsh, Ian Laperriere and Lubomir Visnovsky before learning that Yushkevich would be sidelined too.

They scored first ... but then gave up four consecutive goals.

“We played a bad game,” defenseman Aaron Miller said. “One guy short doesn’t mean we should fall apart like that, so no one’s happy with our effort.”

The Panthers hadn’t won since Nov. 9, a 3-0 victory over the Calgary Flames, but they’d picked up seven points during their 0-1-5-2 slide. Nine of their previous 11 games had gone into overtime, including their last four.

“Unbelievable,” King Coach Andy Murray said before the game. “That shows that they’re not going to go away and they’re a young, brash, hard-working team that hangs in there and finds a way to get points.”

The Panthers got younger when they traded Yushkevich, 31, for Lilja, 27, and Bednar, 26, both of whom figure to play more with their new team.

Bednar scored four goals in 37 games with the Kings, none in 15 this season, but Murray said before the game that he could be a 30-goal scorer.

“We’ve really got to watch him,” he said. “He can light it up on any given night and he’d like nothing better than to get three or four goals against us.”

Lilja, meanwhile, would have liked to make it through the game without spending time in the penalty box. But that’s where he was, sent off for holding Michael Cammalleri, when the Kings opened the scoring with a power-play goal.

Mathieu Schneider’s blast from the blue line gave the Kings a 1-0 lead 4 minutes 11 seconds into the second period.

But the Panthers pulled even 31 seconds later, Ivan Novoseltsev scoring from the right faceoff circle after goaltender Felix Potvin had stopped a shot by Ryan Johnson. With Potvin on his side, Novoseltsev lifted the puck into the net.

At 15:51 of the second period, Bednar notched his 10th assist of the season and first for his new team, poking the puck from behind the net to Kristian Huselius, who rifled a shot from the left faceoff that gave the Panthers a 2-1 lead.

This after the Panthers were outshot, 10-3, in the first period.

“Personally, I don’t think we showed Florida enough respect in the second period,” King defenseman Mattias Norstrom said. The Panthers padded their lead with a power-play goal at 4:38 of the third period, Brad Chartrand in the penalty box for hooking Niklas Hagman.

Attempting to clear puck out of the King zone, Mikko Eloranta sent it around the end boards from the left corner. It went straight to the stick of defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh, who made the score 3-1 with a shot from the right point.

Bednar fed Marcus Nilson at 11:01, leading to a shot from the right circle that increased the Panthers’ lead to 4-1.