LOS ANGELES_It was supposed to be the homestand that saved the Los Angeles Kings' season.
With the playoff race entering the home stretch, they would play seven consecutive games at Staples Center, one against the team they're chasing and three against teams with losing records.
If the Kings were going to go on a tear, this was where it would start.
Two weeks later, they filed out of Staples Center having gone 4-2-1 on the homestand, capped by Thursday night's uninspired 2-0 victory over the Buffalo Sabres.
That's good, but not good enough.
Because what had been a one-point deficit in the Western Conference wild-card race is now a four-point gap _ with seven fewer games in which to make up ground.
Where two weeks ago there was hope, now there is mostly desperation.
"We need to win every game," forward Tyler Toffoli said this week. "We need to get rolling here and find a way to get two points in all these games coming up."
The Kings did that against the Sabres, Jarome Iginla and Adrian Kempe scoring third-period goals to help end a two-game losing streak.
But just as with the homestand, the Kings could have done much better, wasting several chances to put the Sabres away early.
With Buffalo skating backward for most of the first two periods, the Kings put 26 shots on goal.
Sabres goalie Robin Lehner was equal to the challenge, though, making a number of difficult saves to keep the game scoreless.
The Sabres' offensive strategy, meanwhile, was a boring and ineffective game of dump-and-chase, one that required Kings goalie Jonathan Quick to make only two saves in the first period.
Two other shots ricocheted off the goalposts.
Iginla finally broke the deadlock 36 seconds into the third period.
The play started with Dustin Brown taking the puck from the neutral zone to the end boards behind the Buffalo net.
It kicked out to Iginla, who pushed it toward the goal. Lehner made the save but the puck eventually found its way to Anze Kopitar, who fed an unguarded Iginla in the low slot for an easy score.
The goal was Iginla's third since joining the team two weeks ago.
Kempe then doubled the lead, flicking in a wrister from the center of the right faceoff circle with a little more than five minutes to play. Brown got assists on both goals, his first since Feb. 16.
All that did little to ease the Kings' frustration, which forward Kyle Clifford took out on Buffalo's Marcus Foligno in an unusually robust fight midway through a chippy final period.
After missing a golden opportunity to make a strong playoff push at home, the Kings now must make up ground on the road.
They'll play six of their final 12 games outside Staples Center, beginning with consecutive games at Calgary and Edmonton, where they're winless this season.
They'll repeat that trip in reverse order at the end of the month, adding a detour to Vancouver _ where they're also winless _ on the way home before finishing the season in Anaheim.
By then the Kings will either be planning for the playoffs or another long homestand, one that would last all summer.
