A loss tonight was guaranteed to be less soul-crushing than last night’s, but that doesn’t mean the Los Angeles Kings didn’t try to make it hurt. Rank ‘em after a 3-2 shootout loss to the Arizona Coyotes:
At this point, we are firmly in “snowball picking up steam as it rolls down a hill” mode. LA had 44 of 46 shots stopped by Louis Domingue, they hit two posts in the shootout, and after taking the lead with less than two minutes to go: a Drew Doughty shot at the empty-net took a weird hop and went just wide, a puck bounced off two players off the ensuing faceoff, it skipped to a Coyote, the Coyote partially fanned on a shot that went straight to Max Domi, and Domi had an open net to tie the game in the final minute of regulation. What more can you say?
Why did the Kings lose today? They couldn’t score when they should’ve. Why couldn’t they score? That’s a tougher nut to crack, and if you’ve got a good answer, tell us in the comments.