Kings Burned by Flames in Shootout

As the Kings started their just completed road trip with a Sutter Brothers showdown, they started their four-game home stand with a rematch. While the first matchup was a 4-1 victory for the Kings up in the wasteland of Calgary last week, the rematch was less than inspiring as the Kings lost 2-1 in a shootout.

“It’s just one of those games,” Dustin Brown summed up afterwards.

Things looked promising for the Kings in the first period. After Calgary couldn’t get possession of the puck on Justin William’s shanked shot, Dustin Brown came speeding through from the left wing and got a slap shot past Flames’ goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff 3:28 into the game.

“Great first period,” Kings’ head coach Darryl Sutter commented. “Let’s not talk about the others.”

After that neither side could get anything going except for Jarome Iginla’s power-play goal midway in the second period that tied things up. It was former King Mike Cammalleri who got the winning goal in the second round of the shootout. While Kings’ netminder Jonathan Quick made only 24 saves, Kiprusoff stopped 31 shots from the Kings.

“We had a lot of grade-A scoring chances,” Brown noted. “[Kiprusoff] made some saves. I had an empty net in overtime. [Dustin] Penner had a rebound empty net. Somehow the puck stayed out.”

For Penner he didn’t notice a different look from the Flames in this game.

“Not that I can really see form the bench,” Penner said. “We didn’t get a lot of stops down on their end, we put the pucks in deep and were chasing it a lot. We have to change that.”

It’s common knowledge in sports that the first home game after a road trip is always tricky. It looked like the Kings fell into the trap, but Sutter didn’t seem too upset about it. His independent clause of the game: “Pretty even teams.” Now if he’s saying that the Kings are comparable to the Western Conference 11-seed, perhaps that should raise an eyebrow.

What raised my eyebrow was what I found this week. It’s official: the Kings have made the big time. Dustin Penner’s pancake mishap was featured on the Lightning Fill-in-the-Blank segment of last weekend’s episode of NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” http://www.npr.org/programs/wait-wait-dont-tell-me/ The question begins at the 2:56 mark of the segment.

Speaking of pancakes, the Lakers with no offense and no defense also had no prayer against the Dwyane Wade-less Miami Heat losing 98-87 in South Florida.

In the night’s college basketball action the Jesuits beat the Mormons 82-68 (LMU over BYU), Oregon got a home win against USC 65-62, Long Beach State beat Cal Poly 78-69, the mighty UCSB Gauchos bolo-ed the CSUN Matadors 69-61 at the Thunderdome and UCLA came up short against Oregon State 87-84.

TONIGHT’S ACTION
LA Lakers at Orlando Magic. 5:00 p.m. KCAL9, ESPN, AM 710 KSPN.
Minnesota Timberwolves at LA Clippers. 7:30 p.m. FS Prime Ticket, ESPN, AM 980 KFWB.