Lack of Division Skills Adds Up to Another Kings’ Defeat

The Kings are doing a fair job of emulating the late-day sun in the Pacific.

Sinking, sinking, sinking . . . sunk, again, by Greg Adams’ goal with 2:33 to play that gave Phoenix a 2-1 victory Saturday night at the Great Western Forum.

It also gave the Kings a 0-7 record against Pacific Division teams. They remain the only team in the NHL not to have won a game in its division.

“That’s the reason we’re sitting in the position we are,” Coach Larry Robinson said. “. . . That’s one of the major reasons we’re not higher in our standings, our play in our division.”

And their 0-3 record against the Coyotes is the heaviest load of all.

“One of the reasons is that we haven’t played that well at home,” Robinson said.

All three games against Phoenix have been at the Forum, where the Kings are 4-10-2.

Another reason they lost Saturday is that they were largely Shotless in Southern California. The Kings had four shots in the first period, six in the second and were outshot, 23-10, after 40 minutes before a third-period flurry made the shooting statistics deceivingly respectable.

Phoenix led the shooting, 31-27.

The Kings had no shots in six power-play minutes going into the third period, when desperation took over and Robinson inserted winger Glen Murray into a defenseman’s position and got a shot from him and another from Rob Blake.

Another Kings’ powerless play after that passed without a shot, and they are 14 for 152 with a man advantage, the league’s worst example of power.

And yet, perhaps strangely enough, they were tied, 1-1, through two periods.

That was because Vladimir Tsyplakov broke a 139-minute, 27-second scoreless string the Kings had against his Russian countryman Nikolai Khabibulin, stretching into last season and including shutouts on Nov. 1 and Nov. 28.

Tsyplakov was the beneficiary when Pavel Rosa beat two Coyotes to the puck on the side boards and sent it skittering toward center ice. Tsyplakov was waiting and his shot was true from 22 feet at 12:03 of the first period.

It was only the third King shot of the game, and by then Phoenix had outshot them, 10-3.

But one goal wasn’t going to beat Phoenix.

The Coyotes tied it in the second period when Jeremy Roenick took the puck in on the left wing, on a 2-on-1 situation with Dallas Drake that began with a turnover at mid-ice.

King goalie Jamie Storr turned back Roenick’s first shot, but the puck lay tantalizingly in the crease until Roenick could overpower Mattias Norstrom and bat in the rebound.

Actually, the Kings played well enough Saturday night, as long as Phoenix had the puck.

Those “cracks” you heard coming from Inglewood were Coyotes being hammered into the boards in a game whose physical tone was set 3 1/2 minutes into the first period when Blake leveled Drake in open ice.

There was frequent retaliation, some of it in the form of cheap shots, and a lot of both cheap and expensive shots directed at Blake’s defensive partner Norstrom, who will spend a fair amount of time today soaking in a tub after spending most of Saturday night being banged into the boards.

The Kings’ third-period shooting frenzy continued in the final minute, when Storr was pulled and they hammered Khabibulin four times from in close, to no avail.

It made them 0 for 14 with their goalie pulled, the extra attacker proving no advantage at all.

In the end, Phoenix proved it could play without center and winger Keith Tkachuk, sidelined because of a sprained knee. The Coyotes were 0-3 without him.

But they hadn’t played at the Forum without him until Saturday, when the sun again set in the Pacific for the Kings, whose 23 points keep them at the bottom of the Western Conference.

In large part, because of their zero points in the Pacific Division.