LOS ANGELES_At first blush it seemed like a good idea.
Starting this season each NHL team would get a midseason bye week, a five-day break from games and practice to rest and recuperate from the rigors of a demanding six-month schedule.
But the R and R has mostly resulted in Ls, with just three of the first 13 teams to take their league-mandated vacation returning to the ice with a win. That's a trend the Los Angeles Kings continued Thursday, ending their bye week with a wild 5-3 loss to the Arizona Coyotes that kept them a point behind Calgary in the race for the Western Conference's final wild-card playoff berth.
The Kings took a while to get back in the swing of things, stumbling through an opening five minutes that saw Arizona's Brendan Perlini and Tobias Rieder score a pair of goals 16 seconds apart to give the Coyotes a quick 2-0 lead.
The first came with the Kings' Jeff Carter in the penalty box for hooking, marking the first power-play goal the Kings have allowed in nine games and 27 penalty-kill opportunities.
Rieder doubled the lead seconds later, driving hard to the net at the goal line, then jammed the puck between Kings' goalie Peter Budaj and the near post from a tough angle.
The score stayed that way until midway through the third period when the Kings finally came alive, with Tanner Pearson cut the deficit in half by knocking in a rebound for his 16th goal of the season.
That set off a wild five-minute flurry that saw Arizona's Perlini and Jordan Martinook score, sandwiched around a Kings' goal from Dustin Brown. And the Kings had another score waved off when the officials ruled the play had been whistled dead before the shot.
Martinook and Pearson then exchanged goals in last 90 seconds to account for the final score.
But while the Kings fell for the third time in four games, it wasn't a totally lost night. Because if the Kings stumbled through much of the first period, they showed up to work in the second 20 minutes, which started with Carter testing Mike Smith with a wraparound at the far post. The Arizona goalie smothered that shot between his pads, one of 12 saves he made in a busy 20 minutes.
Midway through the third period he made another nice save, lunging to snag Anze Kopitar's first shot of the night in his glove.
After that the game became an angry battle of counterpunches, one that Arizona hung on to win over the well-rested Kings.
Bye weeks, part of the NFL schedule since 1990, were adopted by the NHL this season in exchange for the players' support of changes in the All-Star Game format. Yet judging from the early results, it appears the short breaks have left many teams unsettled.
The Florida Panthers gave up a season-high six goals to the Kings in their first post-vacation game last week while the Calgary Flames matched their worst loss of the season, falling 5-0 to Arizona, in their bye-week return last Monday. Eight of the first 13 teams, including the Kings, gave up at least four goals in their first game back while two were shut out and five others scored just once.
Judged by those standards, the Kings weren't bad Thursday. But they weren't good enough either.
