Wednesday night at Staples, the Kings played about 25 minutes of good hockey and still managed to come within about two inches of claiming a single point and sending the game to overtime. Philadelphia capitalized on defensive breakdowns and bounces while the Kings managed very few quality scoring chances in the 3-2 loss.

Ryan Smyth is reported to be out up to a month, and in the meantime Alexander Frolov takes his place on the top line. While the line did a good job of puck possession and generated a total of 16 shots on goal – only two of those came from Frolov. Smyth and Frolov are two very different players, and it was obvious Wednesday night that Kopitar and Williams missed having the hard driving Smyth on left wing. I kept wondering to myself if Terry Murray would perhaps consider putting Dustin Brown in the left wing spot on the top line – while he and Smyth aren’t exactly twins, Brown will crash and bang and go to the net much like Smyth. I believe the experiment would be worth a try, but then again, I’m not a head coach in the NHL.

Brian Boucher, who hasn’t been a number one goalie in the NHL for a number of years, has won 3 straight over the Kings. While Boucher did his job for certain, he faced little trouble from the Kings’ offense.

Now, the Kings prepare for Calgary on Saturday. The Kings lost all four meeting to the Flames last season, and you can bet Calgary is going to show up ready to play after taking a 7-1 shellacking at the hands of Chicago last night at home. Calgary boasts three of the league’s best individual defensemen in Dion Phaneuf, Robin Regehr and new addition Jay Bouwmeester; and has one of the league’s best goaltenders in Mikka Kiprusoff. Kings will be without Rob Scuderi yet again, but according to Rich Hammond of LAKingsInsider.com, Terry Murray is hoping to have Scuderi back for Wednesday’s game at Edmonton.

This is going to prove to be an important part of the season for these young Kings. Finding a way to win without Ryan Smyth in the lineup will be a challenging task, as Smyth has been a key contributor all season. Teams are starting to key in on Kopitar, so Justin Williams (who had an outstanding game against Philadelphia Wednesday night) will need to step up, as will Alexander Frolov.

Kings and Flames in an afternoon tilt at Staples tomorrow.

-JS

The only confirmation at this point is from Twitter, but the Kings’ have reportedly claimed defenseman Randy Jones off re-entry waivers from Philadelphia.

Kings Official Twitter:

LAKingsHockey

The #LAKings have claimed defenseman Randy Jones off waivers from the #Flyers – more on LAKings.com soon.

Bob McKenzie of TSN:

TSNBobMcKenzie LA Kings claim Randy Jones on re-entry waivers from Philly www.tsn.ca

And just found this – though not “official” from CSN Philly’s Tim Pannachio:

Randy Jones won’t be going back on the Flyers’ roster.

The defenseman was claimed Thursday morning by the Los Angeles Kings on re-entry waivers. That means Jones’ $2.75 million cap hit will be split between the Flyers and Kings.

In other words, the Flyers just took a $1.375 million cap hit for a player they lost on re-entry.

Jones is a gritty vet defenseman, and I like the pickup, but this isn’t really, to me anyways, a player that we needed. Makes me wonder if it’s a precursor to one of the existing D-men being dealt as part of a package? Fire up those trade theories kids!

-JS

If before this season started, you’d have told most long time Kings’ fans and followers that we’d be 4 points back of 8th in the West in late February, and that the Kings would be getting excellent goaltending but would be unable to find the net, most people would’ve had the source committed for insanity. Yet, this is where we are circa February 27th, 2009. The Kings have gotten outstanding goaltending on all 3 games of this road trip thus far, but have only one win to show for it. Having scored two goals in 9 periods of hockey has a lot to do with that.

If you go to NHL.com, Chris Osgood is the headline for the 30 saves made in his return to action. I think this is more than misleading if you actually watched the game. Other than a couple of times in the first period, Osgood wasn’t seriously tested most of the night. The Kings missed a number of open nets (including Kyle Calder, who simply had to have his stick on the ice in order to redirect a Teddy Purcell pass into the open net in the second period) and the vast majority of Osgood’s saves came on shots from the perimeter with no traffic in front of the net. Not to say that Osgood didn’t do his job, but I thought he was far from being the story of the game.

At the other end of the ice, Jon Quick played an outstanding game, stopping 39 of 41 Red Wing shots and making quite a few saves of the breathtaking variety. His only mistake of the game was a costly one – a mishandle of the puck (possibly also a miscommunication with Kyle Quincey) behind the net that led to Detroit’s second goal. Still, Quick gave the Kings a chance to win, and when your goaltender stops that many shots and gives up two, it’s on the rest of the team to find a way to score enough goals to win. You couldn’t have asked much more of the Kings’ goaltender tonight.

So, another loss, zero points in a game when the Kings got great goaltending (Erik Ersberg was also fantastic in Philadelphia Wednesday evening and I personally thought Joffrey Lupul should’ve been called for goalie interference on Philadelphia’s game winner). What gives? When the team seemed to be scoring almost at will on their last road trip and even the first couple games of that subpar homestand, and now appears to be snakebitten, there are going to be a lot of questions.

The first thing I’d like to see is for Terry Murray to reunite the Calder/Stoll/Brown line and put Patrick O’Sullivan back on the top line with Kopitar and Frolov. Beyond that, the Kings need to get back to doing what they did so well, not so long ago – crash the net, get traffic in front of the goaltender – keep it simple.

With 6 weeks of the season left, 21 games to be exact, being only 4 points out means it’s far from over. The Kings’ next two opponents, Chicago and Columbus, have already accounted for 4 each of the Kings 61 points. The playoffs are still a distinct possibility, especially with the kind of goaltending we are getting, but the scoring drought needs to end very soon.

Kings are in Chicago for a matinee Sunday, noon California time.

-JS

It might be yet too early to judge, but Jon Quick is starting to look like a revelation in the Kings’ net. Quick stopped 31 shots, including a penalty shot, and kept the Philadelphia Flyers scoreless in the shootout to clinch a 2-1 Kings victory at Staples Saturday night. He earned first star of the game and though the Kings were only outshot by 1, Quick certainly stole the victory for LA. The Kings made several bad passes and had some other defensive miscues and Quick was there to bail the team out each time. It was a nice change to see the Kings get outplayed and win because of goaltending (although I suppose “outplayed” could be debatable given the amount of quality chances the Kings failed to capitalize on).

Wayne Simmonds looks better as the season goes along, and he got a goal tonight to reward that. For the first time this season, coach Terry Murray suprised nobody with his picks for the shootout, calling on Patrick O’Sullivan, Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown against Philly goaltender Antero Nittymaki. O’Sullivan scored to open the shootout frame and Quick denied Jeff Carter. Kopitar failed to score and then Mike Richards shot over the net. Dustin Brown scored to end the game.

The crowd on hand was the most energetic I’ve seen at Staples this reason. There were a lot of Flyer fans at Staples, and it seems like every one of them had something obnoxious to say before the game started. The vast majority of them left Staples very quietly.

Kings and Ducks square off at the puddle in Anaheim on Tuesday.