Familiar Result Despite New Faces for Kings

TAMPA, Fla. —  One day they were playing for a Stanley Cup contender, the next day they were playing for the Kings.

Not that Sean Avery and Maxim Kuznetsov had any choice.

Traded by the defending champion Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday, they made their King debuts Wednesday night but were unable to prevent their new club from continuing its nosedive with a 4-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Since closing to within four points of the final Western Conference playoff position, the Kings have lost four of five and slipped 10 points behind.

They are 0-8 against playoff teams since Jan. 30 and, after giving up two goals in the last 2 minutes 49 seconds in front of 17,138 at the St. Pete Times Forum, they have not defeated a playoff team on the road since Jan. 6.

It’s a far cry from the Red Wings, who picked up defenseman Mathieu Schneider from the Kings on Tuesday in the deal that brought Avery, Kuznetsov and two draft picks to the Kings.

The star-studded Central Division leaders are 26 points ahead of the Kings in the Western Conference standings.

Naturally, the new Kings were disappointed.

“Detroit is a great team,” said Kuznetsov, a 6-foot-5, 230-pound Russian defenseman who played in 53 games for the Red Wings this season. “I love to be there. But nothing you can do. It’s business. They went for another Cup and picked up a defenseman who’s going to help them more than me....

“But you keep your head up. You’ve got to move forward. It may be better for me to be here at this time than Detroit ... to become a better player because I didn’t have much ice time in Detroit except when somebody was injured.”

He played more than 14 minutes against the Lightning, which broke a 2-2 tie on a goal by Ruslan Fedotenko with 2:49 to play then added an empty-net goal by Vincent Lecavalier with 16 seconds remaining.

Fedotenko’s goal made a winner of Nikolai Khabibulin, who ran his unbeaten streak to a club-record and career-best 10 games. The goaltender is 8-0-2 during the streak with a 1.38 goals-against average and .948 save percentage.

Avery, a forward, played almost 12 minutes without a shot on goal. Like Kuznetsov, he tried to look on the bright side of leaving the Red Wings.

“Obviously, at first I was surprised and a little disappointed,” said Avery, a 22-year-old Canadian who shared a home with Brett Hull in Detroit. “But when I sat down and thought about it, I have to be excited about it.”

He had split his time between the Red Wings and the minors, scoring five goals and assisting on six others in 39 games with the Red Wings.

“There was no guarantee that I was going to be in the lineup during the playoffs,” he said. “Last year, I got a Stanley Cup ring and I sat and watched.”

This spring, he and Kuznetsov will watch from afar.

New teammate Aaron Miller knows the feeling. Two years ago, the veteran defenseman was traded to the Kings from the Colorado Avalanche only four months before the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup.

“They have to look at this as a chance to play more and be a bigger part of something,” Miller said. “Obviously, you’re losing 30 points in the standings, but for them personally it’s got to be a good thing. It worked out for me.”