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The Los Angeles Kings fell to the San Jose Sharks on Monday afternoon 4-1 to increase their losing streak to four games.

During this lull for the Kings, they have lost to three divisional opponents, all of which have gained ground on the Kings from behind.

This has caused some concern that instead of chasing the Vegas Golden Knights for the Pacific Division crown, they will be fighting for their playoff lives as we get closer to the end of the season stretch.

Head coach, John Stevens, was having none of the panic and he made sure everyone knew it.

“We just throw up the white towel,” Stevens exclaimed to the media after the game. “We’re going to go home and call it a season? Is that what you guys want? Listen, it’s not easy, and it’s not supposed to be easy.”

Trevor Lewis, who scored the lone goal for the Kings, feels like the other Pacific Division teams are a little more desperate right now.

“Everyone was chasing us, and now they’re right there with us,” said Lewis. “We’re in a big cluster now and we’ve lost these games in a row. I think we’ve got to clean up some things and also get a little more urgency to start games and throughout the whole game”

This was one game where you couldn’t really pinpoint any big issues for the team. The one thing that was a constant was how easy it was for San Jose to enter the Kings zone.

Zone entry problems, while not an issue the entire game, did come up during some defensive lapses and the Sharks capitalized on them. If you look at it from the other side, when the Kings were able to penetrate, Martin Jones was there to shut the door for most of this game.

This is not an indictment on Darcy Kuemper, who stopped 27 of 30 shots against him. Kuemper got the start partially to give regular starting goalie Jonathan Quick a rest, but also because Quick was not very solid against the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday night.

“He gave us a chance to win,” said Stevens of his backup goaltender. “He made some key saves at key times and I’m not sure you could fault him for anything there. He had lapses there where we weren’t intense around our net… and they executed a little too easily.”

One of the things that the Kings have been missing throughout this year has been a true goal scorer… a sniper. Outside of Tyler Toffoli, many of the Kings core players are playmakers rather than goal scorers. Marian Gaborik isn’t that type of player anymore and the Kings hoped Tanner Pearson could be one but it hasn’t fully shown yet.

Specifically on the top line with Anze Kopitar, the Kings currently have Dustin Brown and Alex Iafallo as his regular wingers. Both of them are more of your sandpaper, physical type, and Kopitar is a playmaker. The question is who is the finisher there?

That is something that is noticeable as the team fails to reach 30 shots consistently each night. However, it might be rectified once Jeff Carter is able to come back from his injury and that type of skill can be spread throughout the lineup.

LA gave up the first goal of the game for the 26th time this season, which has led to the whole “we have to play 60 minutes” cliché that is spouted after every game. However, in this game, Stevens doesn’t believe that was a big factor.

“We had some guys that were really off tonight,” explained Stevens. “I don’t know if the break affected us that way or not, but certainly we had a stretch of that hockey game where we looked totally off. We had some guys in our lineup tonight that were really off, and it showed.”

“We had some key guys- [Kopitar, Brown, Drew Doughty]. The goalie gave us a chance to win and Iafallo was terrific again tonight… We feel good about our team and the leadership of our hockey team, and we’re honest with ourselves. The honesty is we all need to be a lot better.”

Coming up next, the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins come to town on Thursday night. The Penguins are in the middle of a four game winning streak and have won five of their last six games. They have climbed their way back into the playoff picture after struggling up to the Christmas break. However, they will be on the back-end of the back-to-back when they face the Kings as they play the Ducks in Anaheim on Wednesday.

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