The Kings took a double-whammy blow Wednesday night. Not only did they lose an opportunity to wrap up their first-round playoff series at home, but now they have to think about it for three days.
One win away from pulling a massive upset over the President's Trophy winners, the Kings took an early lead but allowed two second-period goals and lost to Vancouver 3-1 on Wednesday night in Los Angeles.
Every NHL player and coach will say that the fourth game of a series is the toughest to win, and the Kings figured to face a big challenge at the start of the game from the desperate Canucks.
Only the game didn't go that way. The Kings, who have become known for their strong starts to first periods of late, dominated the first period and led 1-0, but the Canucks got a power-play goal early in the second period, scored in the middle part of the period and held on.
Now the Kings, one of the youngest teams in the NHL this season, have to sit and wait until Sunday to play Game 5 in Vancouver. The momentum is on the Canucks' side and they will be playing at home, while the Kings will have to answer questions from the media throng about their missed opportunity.
"I don't like the big break," Kings winger Justin Williams said. "It's a long time in between games, and we certainly didn't want to do this. Now we have three more days of interviews to do. On the other side of it, we're going to have good time to regroup, refocus and try to close this out in five now."
NOTES, QUOTES
Special teams falter in Game 4 loss
--There's been a formula to this first-round series between the
Kings and the Canucks: win the special-teams battle, win the game. The
Kings, in the first three games, scored three power-play goals and two shorthanded goals and went 14-for-14 on the penalty kill. That turned around, in a big way, in Game 4. The Canucks scored on their first power-play chance, early in the second period. The Kings had a chance to turn things around when Dustin Brown drew a shorthanded penalty shot, but Canucks goalie Cory Schneider made the save. Less than 30 seconds later, on the same power play, the Canucks scored their second power-play goal of the game -- and the series -- to take a massive two-goal lead.
--The Kings missed their chance at franchise history, and NHL history. Never before had the Kings swept a best-of-seven series, and never before had a No. 8 seed swept a No. 1 seed.
The Kings now have an 8-7 record, all-time, with a chance to close out a playoff series.
QUOTE TO NOTE: "I just think we didn't have as much composure in the second period. We were throwing pucks away and they ended up making plays and we gave them too much space, which, with that team you just can't do. They have some good players that are going to make good plays if you give them time and space. That was the case tonight." -- Kings center Anze Kopitar.
ROSTER REPORT
PLAYER NOTES:
--C Anze Kopitar scored the Kings' goal, which gave them a 1-0 lead in the first period. Kopitar had played well in the first three games of the series but had not scored a goal to go along with his three assists. Kopitar, who led the Kings in the regular season with 25 goals and 51 assists (a career-high total), also had six shots on goal.
--LW Brad Richardson was able to return to the Kings' lineup, nine days after he underwent an emergency appendectomy. On April 9, the day before the Kings left for Vancouver in advance of Game 1 of the series, Richardson felt pain and underwent the procedure in Southern California. Five days later, Richardson was back on the ice for conditioning skating, and he returned to full-team practice on Monday. Richardson moved into a fourth-line role, alongside C Colin Fraser and RW Jordan Nolan, and replaced LW Andrei Loktionov, who had played the previous two games but was a healthy scratch for Game 4.
--LW Kyle Clifford missed his third consecutive game because of what is being called an upper-body injury, but Clifford was able to do some conditioning skating on Wednesday after the Kings finished their morning skate. Clifford hasn't played since he was hit from behind by Vancouver RW Byron Bitz in Game 1, a hit for which Bitz received a two-game suspension. There is no timetable for Clifford's return, although Clifford would need a least a couple full-team practices.
