Blue Jackets Give Kings Fits Again

In their drive to the playoffs, the Kings fell asleep at the wheel Thursday night against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

This wasn’t just another loss.

This was a loss, by a 3-1 count, to a last-place team that had lost six consecutive games while being outscored, 32-5, and only two nights earlier had wrapped up an 0-5 trip. The Blue Jackets had been shut out three times in four games. They hadn’t scored an even-strength goal in more than two weeks.

On the other hand, they were 2-0 against the Kings.

Twelve games below .500 against the rest of the league, they kept intact their perfect record against the Kings by limiting the visitors to a lucky first-period goal that bounced into the net off Steve Heinze’s helmet.

Otherwise, goaltender Marc Denis turned aside 33 shots, four by Ziggy Palffy, and Ray Whitney scored three goals for the first hat trick of his career, delighting a sellout crowd of 18,136 at Nationwide Arena.

“We gave them life,” King defenseman Mattias Norstrom said of the Blue Jackets, who hadn’t won since Feb. 13 and hadn’t scored an even-strength goal since Feb. 12. “It should be the other way around.”

It is the Kings, after all, who fancy themselves a playoff team, the Kings who had a chance to move to within three points of the slumping Edmonton Oilers in the race for the eighth and final Western Conference playoff position.

They also failed to climb back to .500 for the first time since Jan. 7. In wrapping up a 2-3 trip, they also slipped behind the Nashville Predators into 10th place in the West when the surging Predators defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins, 6-0, at Nashville.

“We didn’t give ourselves the best chance to win, from behind the bench down to the goalie,” forward Bryan Smolinski said. “When you’re at the end of a road trip, you’ve got to scratch and claw.”

Instead, they fell into some old habits. Twice in the first period, the Kings were penalized for having too many players on the ice, which is nothing new -- they lead the league in bench minors -- but is nevertheless embarrassing.

“It’s a disgrace how many too-many-men penalties we have,” Smolinski said. “To even think you could get two in one game ... that shouldn’t happen.”

The first was the costliest, defenseman Dmitry Yushkevich jumping onto the ice too early to give the Blue Jackets a man advantage at 7:12 of the first period, less than six minutes after Heinze had scored at 1:42.

Whitney took advantage, scoring on a blast from the left point only four seconds into the power play.

The Blue Jacket captain scored from almost the same spot 41 seconds into the second period. The score remained 2-1 into the final minute, through a late, frantic power play by the Kings during which Coach Andy Murray pulled goaltender Jamie Storr for an extra attacker to give the Kings a six-on-four advantage.

Denis stood tall to the end and Whitney scored into an empty net with 29 seconds to play, bringing forth a rain of caps onto the ice.

The Kings were left to clean up the mess and go home.

“We’re in a desperate situation and these were points that we desperately needed,” Norstrom said. “Our nose is barely above water.”