Buffalo remains cold spot for Kings, who lose 2-1 in overtime to Sabres

The Kings looked tired and played like it Saturday night in a 2-1 overtime loss to the Buffalo Sabres.

After their second game in as many nights, the Kings’ six-game winning streak came to an end, but their point streak reached nine. They’ve gone to overtime in their last three games, winning at Columbus, beating Pittsburgh in a shootout Friday night and losing to the Sabres on Ryan O’Reilly’s goal at 3:19, a stellar individual effort as he scored while falling backward.

“I’m still a bit disappointed. I wish I would have stayed on my feet a little bit longer,” said Kings goalie Jhonas Enroth, who played most of his professional career in Buffalo before getting traded to Dallas last season.

“I just saw him going down and I thought he was going to go down, but he just whacked the puck in and he beat me on my blocker side. It was a really nice second effort from him and I wish I would have played that a bit differently.”

Buffalo is an unforgiving place for the Kings. The last time they won at Buffalo was Feb. 21, 2003, and they have won once in their last 15 games here. There have been other woes too: Their No 1 goalie Jonathan Quick suffered a serious groin injury here in November during the 2013-14 season.

Enroth was in the net for Buffalo last season for one of those victories, shutting out the Kings on Dec. 9. The occasion to play here against his old team was “very special.” He said he was able to chat with Sabres owner Terry Pegula beforehand.

“It was great. … I just tried to have fun with it,” Enroth said. “I was pretty nervous. I just kept telling myself to just have fun and play like a normal game.”

Despite the history in Buffalo and the recent many minutes of hockey, the Kings still had opportunities to leave with a victory. Two of their best chances in overtime came from defenseman Drew Doughty, and center Anze Kopitar had a breakaway but was denied by Sabres goalie Linus Ullmark.

“We played a lot of hockey …. If he [Doughty] scores that, that’s the highlight,” Kings Coach Darryl Sutter said. “If he doesn’t score that, now all you remember is getting scored on.”

Said Kopitar: “I was trying to get my feet going at first. Just tried to go to my backhand and he [Ullmark] read it well and that was about all.

“The first period was nowhere near the way we have to be, to be successful.”

Kopitar said it was “unacceptable.” The Kings were outshot, 12-3, but were tied after one. Marian Gaborik finished off a two-on-one, set up by Kopitar, at 4:47 and Buffalo tied it, 1-1, on Jamie McGinn’s power-play goal, at 7:19, shortly after Kings forward Jordan Nolan went off for interference.

The Kings got considerably better after the first 20 minutes.

“We had to,” Enroth said. “The first period wasn’t nearly close to the way we want to play and Coach Sutter told us that in the intermission.”

They were also boosted by their video coordinators, Samson Lee and Ethan Fink, alerting the bench and Sutter, who made a coach’s challenge to review whether the Sabres were offside before Jake McCabe’s apparent goal with 11.8 seconds left in the second period.

McCabe’s goal would have made it 2-1. After a long conference with NHL hockey operations in Toronto and numerous views of replays, they determined that Buffalo forward Brian Gionta was offside, according to the league’s situation room. No goal.

“Our video guys watch all those plays,” Sutter said. “They made the right call and it was that close in a low-scoring game, you’ve got to call it. Quite honestly, once you look at it from another angle, it’s not even close. That’s the rule. That’s what video is for,”

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