LOS ANGELES — The franchise that once had only one goal is having severe difficulty scoring more than one goal.
Tuesday night’s game against Arizona fell into what has become a routine format for the Kings. Fall behind 2-0 on slipshod special teams play. Score, pull the goalie and come close to scoring again. Then lose, 2-1, their third defeat in their past four games.
The Kings have put the puck into the net eight times in their past five games. Their fans have noticed. They are expressing their opinion silently, in absentia.
It’s quiet and spacious in Staples Center these days, with empty rows in some very good sections, and the atmosphere is muted enough to hear errant passes bounce off the boards. When a fan yells out to shoot the (deleted) puck, everyone can hear, including those in the home jerseys.
Afterward, interim coach Willie Desjardins said the team’s 5-on-5 play was improving, but he’s probably as tired of reviewing the same movie as those who ask him.
It’s not that the Kings didn’t have chances to hand goalie Adin Hill his first NHL loss in five starts. Nate Thompson missed from a few feet away. Jeff Carter came up empty on a backhander, and Anze Kopitar couldn’t dig out a pass from Dustin Brown that wound up in his skates. Near the end, Hill made a nice glove stop on Jake Muzzin. Overall the Kings sent 58 shots toward Hill but he only had to save 26 of them.
There is high anxiety in the Kings’ game these days, and not a lot of coordinated offense. They managed two shots on goal during the only two power plays they got. For an instant, they thought they might have tied it on Dustin Brown’s goal in the final minute, but he clearly knocked down the puck with a high stick and then played it himself.
Their only score was a close-in shot by Alec Martinez, from Kopitar, and Martinez also blocked five shots. That goal came with 5:45 remaining.
Hill, a 6-foot-6, 22-year-old rookie from Comox, B.C., raised his record to 4-0 with a .977 save percentage, a number that actually went down from .984.
“He’s unflappable,” Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet said. “He’s feeling it, and it’s a nice story.”
“They had a few good looks but then we started boxing them out for the most part, and that helped me see the puck,” said Hill, who is the only goaltender from the 2015 NHL draft to reach the NHL so far.
Meanwhile, Arizona’s Alex Galchenyuk was assuredly not boxed out on the Coyotes’ power-play goal. He was able to stand unimpeded in front of Jonathan Quick as Nick Schmaltz fired from the right wing.
“I think if Quickie (Jonathan Quick) has his stick there, he probably makes that save,” Desjardins said.
The other goal came on a Kings power play, which the Coyotes turned into a 2-on-2, and Josh Archibald fed Lawson Crouse.
Arizona has now scored a league-best 11 short-handed goals, only three fewer than its power-play production.
“Sometimes psychology can come into play,” Tocchet said, “when you’re playing against a team that’s on a roll shorthanded. Maybe you get a little nervous and try to make a play through the middle of the ice.”
The Kings are 0 for 13 in overcoming deficits going into the third period. They also have scored one or zero goals in 10 of their 29 games.
“There was desperation late in the third period there,” Kopitar said. “We just have to play like that for more minutes.”
It is hard to expect the desperation to increase when the reasons for it decrease.
