{"id":117086,"date":"2026-01-02T06:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T06:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/117086\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T06:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T06:31:12","slug":"struggling-kings-suffer-late-meltdown-in-loss-to-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/117086\/","title":{"rendered":"Struggling Kings suffer late meltdown in loss to Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gage Goncalves<\/a> scored the tiebreaking goal with 1:41 to play, and the Tampa Bay Lightning rallied from a late deficit to beat the Kings 5-3<\/a> on Thursday night for their sixth consecutive victory.<\/p>\n

Anthony Cirelli scored the tying goal with 3:19 left in regulation for the Lightning, who fell behind early in the third period on Kevin Fiala<\/a>\u2018s power-play goal.<\/p>\n

Cirelli crashed the net and pushed home his 11th goal on a play set up by Brandon Hagel and Nikita Kucherov. Moments later, Cirelli and Goncalves drove the net again, and Goncalves eventually converted a behind-the-net pass from Jake Guentzel for his fourth goal.<\/p>\n

Brayden Point had his first two-goal game of the season and Kucherov capped a three-point night by putting his 19th goal into an empty net for the Lightning, who have won back-to-back games to begin their three-game California road trip. Point also scored in Tampa Bay\u2019s 4-3 overtime victory against the Ducks on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Jonas Johansson stopped 17 shots for Tampa Bay (24-13-3), which hasn\u2019t lost since Dec. 18.<\/p>\n

Fiala and Andrei Kuzmenko<\/a> each had a goal and an assist on the power play for the Kings<\/a> (16-14-9), who collapsed late in their eighth loss in 10 games despite scoring multiple man-advantage goals for the first time all season. Los Angeles entered the night with the NHL\u2019s worst power play, scoring on just 14.4% of its chances.<\/p>\n

Corey Perry had his first three-assist game since November 2019, setting up both power-play goals and giving him 499 career assists.<\/p>\n

Jeff Malott also scored, and Darcy Kuemper returned from injury to make 18 saves in the Canadian Olympic team selection\u2019s first appearance since Dec. 15.<\/p>\n

Up next for the Kings: vs. Minnesota at Crypto.com Arena on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gage Goncalves scored the tiebreaking goal with 1:41 to play, and the Tampa Bay Lightning rallied from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[18696,18692,62250,62249,2194,11370,664,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,3289,38374,18056,4637,278,17438,62251],"class_list":["post-117086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-anthony-cirelli","tag-brayden-point","tag-first-two-goal-game","tag-gage-goncalves","tag-goal","tag-kevin-fiala","tag-king","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-loss","tag-net","tag-nikita-kucherov","tag-power-play","tag-season","tag-tampa-bay-lightning","tag-three-point-night"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}