Kings have no answers in loss

Like a house of cards stacked high, the Kings’ early two-goal lead appeared to have some foundation, but it was only a matter of time before that advantage crumbled right before their eyes.

Ryan Smyth scored two goals in the third period to break a tie as the Colorado Avalanche responded with five unanswered goals in a 5-2 victory Saturday night in front of 17,297 at Staples Center, keeping the Kings in the Pacific Division basement.

Smyth did his work in his normal spot in front of the net with a goal 19 seconds into the third and another at the 11:25 mark. Jaroslav Hlinka scored his first NHL goal and the Kings offered no response.

The turnaround left Kings Coach Marc Crawford fuming as he ordered up a practice today on what would have been a scheduled day off.

“It looked like we were going to have a great game and then our wheels completely fell off,” Crawford said. “I wish I had an explanation for you as to why the wheels fell off.”

The third period was disastrous for the Kings (10-14-1), who also lost goalie Jason LaBarbera to a rib injury. LaBarbera left the game with 14:40 remaining in the third after getting hurt when Smyth poked him during a scramble for the puck.

“They’re supposed to protect the goalies,” Crawford said. “Ryan Smyth is famous for going to the net hard. Everybody loves the way he plays. But that was a dirty play and I hope it’s reviewed. We lost our goaltender now because of it.”

From the first puck drop, the rested Kings jumped all over a Colorado team that had played in San Jose the night before.

Patrick O’Sullivan stripped Avalanche defenseman Kyle Cumiskey of the puck in the offensive zone and set up a tap-in for Kings forward Raitis Ivanans that gave the enforcer his second goal of the season.

Their second goal of the first came with O’Sullivan getting the puck on a cycle play from Dustin Brown and threading a pass back to Anze Kopitar, who beat Jose Theodore for his third goal in the last four games.

It was O’Sullivan’s second multi-point game of the season and it appeared the Kings were about to roll. But the Avalanche, who were playing for the first time in 232 games without venerable captain Joe Sakic, awoke from their slumber late in the first.

Paul Stastny cut the lead in half when he flipped in a shot past LaBarbera as Colorado got its own cycle game going in the corners, controlling play throughout the second period and dominating the game thereafter.

“We came out hard, we played our style of game and then we didn’t play that way in the second period,” Kings forward Kyle Calder said. “Unfortunately it came back to bite us. We’ve been talking all along about learning from things like that.

“I don’t know what it is. I don’t have all the answers. We have to battle. That’s our game. We get away from that and it’s going to end up in our net.”

T.J. Hensick tied the score with a breakaway goal in his second NHL game after making his debut against the Sharks. Hensick was a teammate of Kings rookie Jack Johnson at Michigan last year and a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award as the nation’s top collegiate hockey player.

Hensick got some speed through the neutral ice and blew past defenseman Jaroslav Modry, who returned to the lineup after tending to his sick father in his native Czech Republic.

Sakic sat out his first game since the 2003-04 season because of a sore groin. He has only missed two games in the last four seasons.

The Kings have their own share of groin troubles. Alexander Frolov missed his fourth consecutive game but Michael Cammalleri was back in the lineup after missing a game.

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eric.stephens@latimes.com