Kings like their latest streak

From Columbus, Ohio

After watching the Kings bounce from one extreme to another it’s impossible to predict whether their game Thursday against the Blue Jackets will continue their latest season-within-a-season or trigger an about-face.

Their 12-3 start was their best season, blending offensive balance with solid defense. Their defense wobbled as they fell into a 1-7 slump, but they roared out of that with a 9-2-1 turnaround that included three shutouts.

Everything went haywire in a 2-10 skid they’re still correcting even after earning points in nine straight games (7-0-2) and matching the fourth-longest point streak in team history.

“I’ve never been on a team that’s this streaky,” right wing Justin Williams said Tuesday after the Kings practiced at Nationwide Arena. “You always say you don’t want to get too high or too low, but we seem to find the top and bottom very easily this year.”

Their latest surge has been driven by clutch goaltending, stingy defense and near-flawless penalty killing, the script they’ll have to follow while General Manager Dean Lombardi continues his quest for a scoring winger. There’s no guarantee Lombardi will find that elusive commodity at reasonable terms, so with Anze Kopitar having scored once in 12 games and twice in 22 and Dustin Brown once in 15 games and twice in 21, the Kings will have to maintain their solid team defense and exceptional penalty killing.

So far so good. They’ve limited opponents to three goals or fewer in 15 consecutive games and have neutralized 27 of 29 disadvantages in the past nine games, achievements that would have been impossible without the sharpness of Jonathan Quick, who recorded his 14th career shutout with a 40-save performance against the Flyers on Sunday.

“There were a couple of points where they had a lot of momentum and were pushing and we’d bend but we didn’t break,” Quick said. “They have some very talented players there and we were frustrating them. They couldn’t get into the zone and they couldn’t get set up. They had a five-on-three they didn’t get set up on, and efforts like that discourage them and carry over into the five-on-five play.”

Defenseman Willie Mitchell was on the ice for five minutes of the Flyers’ seven minutes and 40 seconds’ power-play time Sunday and for 4:51 of Washington’s power-play time Saturday. The Kings were four for four in each game and won each game, giving the penalty killers a new swagger.

“When we jump over the boards we feel that we can make a difference in the game. And we have, the last little while,” Mitchell said, crediting assistant coach John Stevens for organizing the unit. “We take a lot of pride in it and we believe that nowadays special teams are so important to win games and have good stretches, and those things are making us good right now.”

They’ll have to be at least as good to keep it going and reclaim a place among the top eight in the West.

“Part of developing and growing as players and growing as a team is that you should never get too high or too low. You’re not as good as you think you are or as bad as you think you are,” Mitchell said. “When you find that even keel, have fun coming to the rink, not panic as a team, you’ll see a lot of growth.

“That’s something as veteran players we try and talk about and bring to the table. Going through it a couple times this year already is a good learning experience for us for when we hit some adversity coming down the stretch. Because the reality is we’re not going to win every game. We’re going to lose a couple, and we have to be able to respond. What doesn’t break you makes you stronger.”

helene.elliott@latimes.com

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