Kings Are Left Black and Blue

En route to Los Angeles via Seattle after a weekend trip to Western Canada, Andy Murray endured a rocky flight Sunday over the Cascade Mountains.

While other passengers screamed in terror as the small aircraft pitched in a storm, the King coach sat quietly, if not altogether calmly.

Murray knows turbulence.

Thrown by a wave of injuries that scrambled the lineup, the Kings were jostled from the playoff picture in the weeks leading to the All-Star break.

As they resume their season tonight at Staples Center against the Phoenix Coyotes, they stand 12th in the Western Conference, nine points out of a playoff spot. Their special teams, among the NHL’s best last season, do not rank in the top 20. Their goals-against average ranks 20th. They’ve won only five of their last 20 games, having scored fewer than two goals a game.

And their injury list is as long as a winter night in Edmonton.

When they talk of making a late run to the playoffs, as they’ve done the last two seasons, they sound more wistful than willful.

Their top center, Jason Allison, probably won’t be fully sound until training camp in September. Top-line winger Adam Deadmarsh, still second on the team in goals with 13 despite sitting out 32 of 52 games, might not play again this season. Felix Potvin, their No. 1 goaltender and “the Cat” they rode hard into the playoffs the last two years, is not expected back before the middle of next month, if at all.

Uncertainty also surrounds the club’s five potential unrestricted free agents -- Potvin, defensemen Aaron Miller and Dmitry Yushkevich, and forwards Bryan Smolinski and Craig Johnson -- any or all of whom could be gone before the March 11 trade deadline if the Kings are unable, or unwilling, to re-sign them.

For the Kings, the bumpy ride may have only just begun.

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At the All-Star break a year ago the Kings were 25-19-7-2, having dug themselves out from an 8-14-4-2 start. Their 11-3 January was the best in club history.

Last week, they lurched into the break at 20-24-4-4. Their seventh-place standing in the West after a 15-10-4-3 start through a brutal road schedule and an initial wave of injuries was all but forgotten. They were 4-10-0-1 in January.

Not that there weren’t good reasons for their prolonged slide.

Deadmarsh, sidelined since suffering a second concussion in little more than a month, hasn’t played since Dec. 15. Allison, sidelined after an Oct. 29 knee injury, made a triumphant return less than six weeks later but hasn’t been the same since suffering a second knee injury Dec. 22. And lately, a strained hip flexor, a result of overcompensating for the pain in his right knee, has kept him out of the lineup.

Because of abdominal surgery and a broken foot, Miller, perhaps the Kings’ most dominant defenseman, has played in only one more game than Deadmarsh. Smolinski, their No. 2 center, sat out 11 games in December and January because of an eye injury. Eric Belanger, their No. 3 center and No. 1 faceoff man, has sat out 15 because of a strained back and won’t resume skating for another week.

Unfortunately for the Kings, that’s only a partial list of their injuries. They haven’t played a game all season with everybody sound.

“It definitely feels different,” said Allison, asked how the task ahead compared to what the Kings faced a year ago. “You’re struggling and you look down the line ... and you never have a healthy lineup. And key guys out too....

“It certainly plays a part in the mental part of the game too. When you know as a team that we’ve got to win close to X number of games to get into the playoffs, it certainly seems that much harder with all these guys out. That’s human nature, but you’ve got to put that aside and take a one-game-at-a-time approach.”

In the six weeks leading up to the All-Star break, the Kings averaged one victory every four games, a pace that, should it continue, will quickly dash their playoff hopes. To prolong their season beyond the April 6 regular-season finale, they’ll probably have to win three of every four games over the next 8 1/2 weeks.

That would give them 93 points, two fewer than they had last season, when they finished seventh in the West, one point ahead of the Vancouver Canucks and three ahead of the ninth-place also-rans, the Dallas Stars and Edmonton Oilers.

Of course, 45 points over the season’s last 30 games wouldn’t sound so out of reach if the Kings didn’t still have nine injured players sidelined or had won consecutive games even once since mid-December.

But they do, and they haven’t.

Club President Tim Leiweke, while acknowledging that injuries have played a major role in derailing the Kings’ plans, nevertheless has said the club may be forced to make late-season trades with an eye to the future.

If the Kings are unable to sign their potential unrestricted free agents, it behooves the club to deal them before losing them without compensation, he said.

That’s sound business sense, even if it’s a little unsettling.

The problem for the Kings is that they have two months to make a playoff run, but only one before they have to make hard decisions.

The trade deadline looms.

“Ideally, as a player, what I would like to see is for us to re-sign the free agents and get another kick at the can next year because I think we have a good team here,” defenseman Mathieu Schneider said. “We came in, we had a good start to the season and

That’s probably true, but their window of opportunity may be closing. By regular season’s end, the Kings might not look much like they do today.

Of course, if they’re in the playoffs, nobody will much care.