Kings go down, slip in standings

Don’t like the Western Conference standings? Wait a while and they’re likely to change dramatically.

The Kings woke up Saturday holding the top spot in the Pacific division and the No. 3 seeding in the West playoff rankings. By afternoon Dallas had vaulted past them and dropped them to seventh. By the end of the day, after their six-game winning streak had ended with a 4-2 loss to the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins and all other games were completed, they were clinging to eighth.

Goals one minute and 19 seconds apart in the third period by Milan Lucic and Chris Kelly broke open a tight game at Staples Center and put Boston ahead, 3-1. The Kings closed to within a goal at 14:46, on a rising shot by defenseman Slava Voynov that eluded goaltender Tim Thomas, but they couldn’t pull even. Brad Marchand scored into an empty net with one second left to clinch the victory for the Bruins, who have had a rocky season and are trying to establish some consistency before the playoffs begin.

The Kings outshot the Bruins, 42-26, including an 18-7 edge in the final period, but lost for the fourth time in their last 14 games.

“We had a lot of shots but it feels like there were not a whole lot of Grade-A chances, so we’ve got to work on that,” Anze Kopitar said.

After breaking their season-long scoring slump the Kings might be slipping back into their old habits. They were shut out by St. Louis on Thursday before winning in a shootout, and they scored only twice Saturday while squandering four power-play chances.

The sands are going through the hourglass quickly: They have seven games left, starting with a trip that begins Monday at Vancouver and continues to Calgary, Edmonton and Minnesota, and the closeness of the standings magnifies every mistake or triumph.

“That’s why you’ve got to keep winning this time of year,” defenseman Willie Mitchell said. “You see it with other teams in our division go on a 9-1 stretch in the last 10 and it’s not like they really pull away from other teams.

“You’ve got to win this time of year, and we didn’t tonight.”

After a scoreless first period, the teams traded goals in the second period.

Boston forward Brian Rolston was sent off for holding at 4:53, giving the Kings a power play, but the Bruins’ penalty killers turned the situation to their advantage. Kings defenseman Drew Doughty was at his own blue line and trying to get the puck up the right side to Kopitar when Marchand stepped in and tipped the puck away. Marchand took a shot that was stopped by Kings goalie Jonathan Quick, but Bergeron easily put away the rebound for his 20th goal of the season. “Drew has got to expect that pressure there,” Kings Coach Darryl Sutter said.

The Kings matched that at 13:17 on a well-timed pass by Doughty to Colin Fraser, who got outside on Boston defenseman Adam McQuaid and flicked a wrist shot past Thomas for his second goal this season and first since Nov. 12.

In the third, Lucic used Kings defenseman Rob Scuderi as a screen and rifled a long shot through Quick’s pads at 4:37 to give Boston the lead. A pass by Benoit Pouliot intended for Kelly caromed off Kelly’s skate and into the net at 5:56 and survived video review to make it 3-1 for Boston, until Voynov’s sixth goal this season trimmed the Kings’ deficit to one.

The game was delayed twice in the first period because of clock-related problems, once when the clock wasn’t started when it should have been. Those issues were quickly corrected, unlike the Feb. 1 glitch that added a second to the Kings’ game against Columbus and gave Doughty time to score a winning goal that league executives later acknowledged should not have counted.

The Kings have other issues -- like staying in the top eight. They’re ahead of San Jose only because they have more regulation and overtime wins, 31-30.

“We know how it is, the standings so tight,” Kopitar said. “We won a few in a row. We were in third place. You lose one and you’re back down there fighting for survival.”

helene.elliott@latimes.com

Twitter.com/helenenothelen