Dustin Brown remains a cornerstone for Kings

CALGARY, Canada — Sounds of little-kid celebration wafted upstairs and pierced Dustin Brown’s bubble of sick-bay isolation.

Captain, contagious.

Not only was Kings captain Brown ailing, feeling sweaty and cold at the same time, and unable to fully participate in the birthday party for two of his three sons, but also he would later endure one of his worst weeks on the job.

How about getting called out and traded out of town?

Never mind that only the first thing actually happened. Kings Coach Darryl Sutter said in late February that linemates Brown and Anze Kopitar had become stale, among other things. Then Twitter kicked into high gear a few days before the trade deadline — filling the void between Jeff Carter and Rick Nash rumors — and Brown became everyone’s favorite power forward for a few hours.

Good morning, Toronto. Good afternoon, Buffalo. Good night, New York.

Everything made sense for aching-to-be, armchair general managers with quick computer trigger fingers.

But Brown survived to play another day in L.A. ... and thrived. The Kings said he was not being peddled around the league and Brown revealed that AEG chief Tim Leiweke made a point of telling Brown’s wife, Nicole, that he was not being traded.

That conversation happened to be when the Kings were playing Chicago on Feb. 25 at Staples Center, Brown said.

Brown scored three goals and added an assist against the Blackhawks, the final Kings game before the NHL trade deadline. That performance kicked off his 10-game point-scoring streak and neatly coincided with the Kings’ revival in the Western Conference race.

“The funny thing is I think a lot of that’s coincidence,” Brown said in an interview Friday during lunch in El Segundo. “I guess when you get called out by your coach it’s more than having trade rumors. Because you don’t know if trade rumors are true and it happens every year.

“When your coach calls you out — it’s someone you work with day to day — you look yourself in the mirror.

“This whole year, probably not just for me, but for a lot of players on this team it has been a very, very very frustrating year. From the standpoint of just struggling, struggling with not scoring. From about November to February, we didn’t score.”

That has been a recurring and increasingly worrisome issue. The Kings swatted it down — averaging 3.5 goals per game in the first 12 games after Carter arrived, via trade, in late February — and then the offense hit a decided lull again in their last three games, two of them losses.

They’ve scored two goals in their last three games and have been shut out 10 times this season, including a 1-0 loss Monday at Vancouver, which, for now, knocked them out of a playoff spot. The line of Justin Williams-Kopitar-Brown had a combined 14 shots on goal against the Canucks, with Brown and Williams recording six each.

Brown has 19 goals and 47 points in 76 games, and 20 of those points have come in the last 26 games. He has been pointless in five of 17 games since Sutter’s tough-love message was delivered through the media.

Sutter explained the motive behind the method. It was as much as sending a message to the 27-year-old Brown and the 24-year-old Kopitar as it was trying to ultimately help the younger kids, such as forwards Kyle Clifford, Dwight King and Jordan Nolan.

“It’s just the team the way it is, the age of the group, and the way those guys are looked at it in the locker room,” he said. “It’s important [Kopitar and Brown] understand their responsibility and their accountability that has to come with it. I know when I talk to the younger kids, how much they look up to those guys.

“They have to be great example setters for them, otherwise it looks like it’s just coming from the coach and it’s not the way it should work. I should be the least important part of that peer pressure they get.”

There is the long-term outlook Sutter is targeting and then the immediate future. The Kings, ninth in the Western Conference, play Wednesday night at Calgary, which trails them by one point, and then at Edmonton and Minnesota.

Critical games and critical points.

“This team can be frustrating,” Brown said. “It can be good and so average. And I think what you’re seeing lately is probably the most important thing. I’ve always said your best players need to be your best players and right now our best players are our best players.”

Brown was troubled that the emerging offense had evaporated again over the last week.

“That’s what is frustrating about this year and what’s been hard,” he said. “It’s one thing if I was having an off year and everyone else was lighting it up and we were winning. But it’s like everyone was having, statistically, down years and you start thinking about it.”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com

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