Kings’ loss to Red Wings isn’t fun

Passengers greatly outnumbered performers on this wildly careening Kings bus of a season, rapidly headed toward the road sign titled “The Abyss.”

Bliss would be down the hallway in the Detroit dressing room.

“Must be fun,” said Kings defenseman Jaroslav Modry, shaking his head, as he put in hard time on the exercise bike after Detroit’s 6-2 victory against the Kings. The last time the Kings defeated Detroit at Joe Louis Arena was Feb. 18, 2000.

The brief topic of discussion was the virtuoso play-making of the league-leading Red Wings this particular Wednesday night -- Detroit defenseman Niklas Kronvall had a career-high four assists -- and the idle question or two.

As in when will the Red Wings lose in regulation again? It hasn’t happened since Nov. 22 against Nashville. Then there was the other obvious question: When will the last-place Kings win again?

Talk about a tough one. The Kings have lost five consecutive games, matching a season high, which happened in October. Here, they came back once against Detroit, pulling even after trailing, 2-0, but then allowed four unanswered goals.

Then, as now, Detroit also happened to deal the Kings their fifth straight loss, back in October, drawing some uncommonly sharp words from Michael Cammalleri, who was then on a scoring run.

Wednesday, the criticism came from the person at the figurative wheel of the tilting bus, Kings Coach Marc Crawford.

“We didn’t have anything from the bottom end of our lineup,” he said. “They were awful. They have to do more than that. They just can’t keep expecting the top guys to do everything. They’ve got to come up with workmanlike efforts.”

Officiating was not spared, either. The Red Wings scored two power-play goals on five attempts, and had three straight power-play opportunities in the second period.

Kings goalie Jason LaBarbera, who faced 35 shots, said of the Red Wings power play: “They’re so good -- they’re going to kill you. It doesn’t matter how well you play on the penalty kill. A team like that will bury you on the power play.”

Said Crawford: “Everything we did we got penalized for tonight. And that wasn’t the same the other way. I guess that happens when people perceive you not to be a very good team. You just have to work through it.

“We need more from the bottom end of our lineup. We’re getting nothing. We need more than that. They were nonexistent tonight. That group needs to be better. It’s about work. One guy I thought that was at least working was [Jeff] Giuliano.”

A rare bright spot was the No. 1 line of Anze Kopitar-Patrick O’Sullivan-Dustin Brown. Brown scored his team-leading 16th goal, on the power play, at 18:32 of the first and O’Sullivan had his seventh 15 seconds into the second. Kopitar assisted on both.

“We had a great effort from our top line,” Crawford said. “That might have been the best line on the ice tonight.”

One line only stretches so far. And the Kings had their all-too-often moment of fragility after pulling back to 2-2, a fluke goal by Detroit’s Tomas Holmstrom at 3:35 of the second.

The Kings seemed almost visibly deflated, unable to deal with those type of goals.

“I didn’t see where the puck went and all of a sudden it hit me, it landed behind my feet. I tried to kick it out,” LaBarbera said. “It was such a surprise to me. I tried to pull back from underneath me and Holmstrom must have just tipped it.”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com