With no help coming, Kings players struggling to prove they're playoff-worthy

You’re on your own.

That’s the message Kings general manager Ken Holland delivered to his team at the NHL trade deadline, when he turned his attention from the present to the future.

Rather than make a major move, Holland folded. The cards he was holding and the deficit he faced in the standings told him he didn’t have a winning hand.

“These are the decisions that I have to make,” he said. “Certainly where we are in the standings, I have to make some philosophical decisions.”

Where they are after giving up third-period goals just 49 seconds apart Saturday in a 4-3 loss to the Montreal Canadiens is sixth in the eight-team Pacific Division, four points out of a wild-card berth with 20 games remaining.

Read more: Kings can’t hold on to third-period lead in loss to Canadiens

So Holland decided draft picks for next season and the season after were more valuable than immediate help this season. That’s a big change in philosophy from just a month ago, when Holland traded away part of the future — a prospect and two draft picks — for forward Artemi Panarin just ahead of the Olympic break.

But before Panarin had played his fourth game with his new team, the Kings fired coach Jim Hiller and lost wingers Andrei Kuzmenko, Kevin Fiala and Joel Armia to injuries.

“If Fiala was healthy and Armia was healthy, we’d be looking at our team different,” Holland said. “That’s why I did the deal before the deadline. We don’t have a lot of key pieces.”

“We want to continue to try to push to qualify for the playoffs,” he continued. “At the same time, behind the scenes, we’re trying to get some [draft] picks, looking to the future.”

So Holland called off the cavalry. If the Kings are going to make a run at a fifth straight playoff berth, they’re going to have to do it with an interim coach and the guys they already have. Holland made only a few cosmetic moves ahead of Friday’s trade deadline, shipping out forwards Corey Perry and Warren Foegele for draft picks and adding Scott Laughton and Mathieu Joseph, depth pieces, neither of whom are signed beyond this season.

Montreal forward Juraj Slafkovsky scores on Kings goaltender Darcy Kuemper during the third period Saturday. (Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

And if that sounded like a lack of confidence, D.J. Smith, the interim coach, said it was well-earned.

“It’s up to the players and the coaching staff to get the team in a spot where the [general] manager feels that he’s got to really help the group to try to win,” he said Saturday. “Obviously we didn’t do that enough and it’s unfortunate.”

But if the Kings’ breathing is shallow and their pulse faint, they aren’t dead just yet despite seven losses in their last nine games.

“We’re trying to win,” Holland said. “It’s the National Hockey League. We’re [four] points out of a playoff spot. Maybe the narrative changes if you’re 15 points out of a playoff spot. But we’re [four] points out of a playoff spot.”

Panarin — wearing the No. 10 sweater Perry had before he was traded to Tampa Bay — helped the Kings take a first-period lead Saturday, battling Montreal defender Mike Matheson for the puck entering the Canadiens’ zone. That allowed Adrian Kempe to skate in and take the puck off Matheson’s stick and feed Anze Kopitar at the far post for the tap-in.

That goal gave Kopitar 1,304 points for his career, just three shy of Marcel Dionne’s franchise record.

Samuel Helenius thought he had doubled the lead less than two minutes later but the goal was waved off by goalie interference. And the Kings should have had more after a period in which they outshot the Canadiens 16-1.

That proved costly when Montreal’s Jake Evans drove a slap shot by Kings goalie Darcy Kuemper from the top of the left circle to tie the score in the second period.

Juraj Slafkovsky put Montreal in front less than five minutes before the second intermission, lifting a wrist shot over Kuemper’s glove from the slot. But Laughton, making his Kings debut, got that back two minutes later, lining a low wrist shot from a tough angle off the pads of Canadiens goalie Jakub Dobes. Jared Wright got his first NHL point with an assist on the play.

Read more: Artemi Panarin scores his first goal with Kings in victory over Islanders

The Kings’ Alex Laferriere and Slafkovsky traded third-period goals, with Slafkovky scoring 31 seconds after Trevor Moore went to the penalty box for slashing. That set the stage for Nick Suzuki’s go-ahead goal 49 seconds later, following a Moore turnover deep in the Kings’ end.

And that moved the Kings a game closer to a new season Holland has begun preparing for.

“Time is running out,” Laferriere said. “We have 20 games left now and we need every single point. We can’t change what happened so we’ve got to try to take the positives from the game and make sure it doesn’t happen ever again.”

Because from here on out, they’re on their own.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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