Depleted Kings Are Replete With Defeat

The Dallas Stars finally found a way to outscore the Kings, or at least the injury-depleted lineup that passes for the Kings these days.

Shut out the last three times they’d played the Kings, they scored two goals in the first nine minutes of the third period Saturday night to win, 3-2, at Staples Center, denying the Kings their most improbable victory of the season.

In front of a sellout crowd of 18,118, the patchwork Kings took a 2-1 lead into the final 20 minutes, but goals by Derian Hatcher and Jere Lehtinen sent them to their fourth consecutive loss and sixth in seven games.

They’d lost the others by at least two goals, but that was of little consolation after Hatcher scored on a 60-foot shot from the blue line at 3:04 and Lehtinen squeezed a difficult-angle shot from the left faceoff circle into the net at 8:43.

“We gave ourselves an opportunity to win,” goaltender Jamie Storr said. “We just have to finish off the job at the end -- whether that’s finishing a check, making a save or scoring a big goal. We just have to find a way.... The guys are battling hard, but the losses aren’t cutting it.”

The latest dropped them to 16-16-4-3, in danger of falling below .500 for the first time this season, and left them six points behind Edmonton and Chicago in the race for the eighth playoff position in the Western Conference.

They again were without nine injured players, among them eight forwards. They thought they’d trimmed the injured list to eight with the return of Steve Heinze, but then they determined that rookie Alexander Frolov wasn’t fully recovered from a deep cut on his left cheek and sat him down again.

Under different circumstances, a letdown by the Stars might have been expected, but the Pacific Division leaders hadn’t scored against the Kings since March 6.

“We knew how L.A. was going to play,” said Star Coach Dave Tippett, a former King assistant. “They’re relentless and they stay with it. If you’re not willing to stay with it yourself, you’re going to be in trouble.”

In a 3-0 King victory Dec. 11 at Dallas, Storr had stopped 35 shots. Three weeks earlier, in a 2-0 King victory, Felix Potvin had stopped 29.

This time, with Potvin again watching from the bench as the Kings extended his down time in an effort to coax him out of a slump, the Stars again saw Storr, who started consecutive games for the first time since November 2001.

The Stars’ goaltender, Ron Tugnutt, was put in a tough spot early on. Penalties against defensemen Philippe Boucher at 8:02 of the first period and Richard Matvichuk at 8:49 gave the Kings a two-man advantage for 73 seconds.

Sixty-four seconds into it, defenseman Mathieu Schneider scored his ninth goal, taking a pass from Jaroslav Modry and ripping a shot from the high slot into the upper right corner of the net. Ziggy Palffy also drew an assist, his 300th.

Bill Guerin ended the Stars’ scoreless streak against the Kings after 207 minutes 40 seconds, scoring a power-play goal at 7:40 of the second period off a pretty backhanded pass from Mike Modano. That tied the score at 1-1.

Less than four minutes later, the Kings regained the lead on a 50-foot shot by defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky, who took a drop pass from Palffy about 10 feet inside the blue line and rifled a shot through the legs of defenseman Derian Hatcher.

Before that, they lost another forward, tough guy Kip Brennan suffering a bruised right foot when he blocked a shot by Star defenseman Darryl Sydor.