LOS ANGELES (AP) – The Los Angeles Kings gathered at center ice while the Stanley Cup was lowered from the scoreboard, and they watched their championship banner raised to the rafters in a stirring pregame ceremony.
Those good feelings were largely gone by the time the Kings stumbled back to their dressing room after a blowout loss to the San Jose Sharks, who seized the chance to erase a bit of last season’s bad memories.
Tommy Wingels scored two goals, Antti Niemi made 34 saves in his 28th career shutout, and the Sharks crashed the Kings’ Stanley Cup banner celebration with a 4-0 victory in the season opener Wednesday night.
The pregame celebration was the only thing that went according to plan for the Kings, who commemorated their 26-game playoff run to their second title in three years. After the standing ovations and celebrations, San Jose largely dominated the Kings in the first two periods with superior puck possession and movement.
“That’s just an excuse,” Kings captain Dustin Brown said. “We’ve been there before. … There are worse problems to have, so it’s one of those things that goes with the territory. That wasn’t why we were sloppy. We were sloppy because we didn’t prepare properly.”