Kings continue in a giving mood

There are two points waiting to be found at Staples Center, or so it seems, for any playoff-worthy NHL team that shows up and puts in a little work.

That appears to be the level the Kings find themselves at nearly one-fourth of the way through the season. It was certainly the case Saturday, when the Minnesota Wild dropped by and made enough plays to walk off with a 3-2 shootout victory in front of an announced 17,479.

When goaltender Manny Fernandez reached out with his left skate and blocked a Sean Avery point-blank shot, the Wild had escaped with two points it probably didn’t deserve, and the Kings were left with their ninth loss in the last 11 games. Todd White, the Wild’s fifth shooter, scored the winner, leaving the Kings among the Western Conference’s bottom feeders -- the St. Louis Blues, Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets and Phoenix Coyotes.

“Top teams in this league find a way to win on nights when they aren’t at their best,” center Craig Conroy said. “That’s where we need to get. We haven’t had success against the good teams in our conference. Anaheim, San Jose, Dallas, teams like that are tests for us.”

The Kings are 0-8-2 against teams that held a Western Conference playoff spot as of Saturday. Their marquee victory was against ninth-place Colorado on Tuesday.

Getting a point as a consolation prize was something to grasp, but “the bottom line in this league is wins,” Conroy said. “The effort was there. But you have to win games.”

Coach Marc Crawford still considers the massive changes the Kings underwent during the off-season as a reason for the team’s poor start, even though they have had three weeks of training camp and 19 regular-season games to assimilate.

“It takes four to six months games on the average to adjust to those kind of changes in anything,” Crawford said. “In sports, that should be about half of that, but make no mistake, it is an issue.

“We’re approaching the quarter pole on our season and we have no more leeway, that’s for sure. This has taken longer than anticipated, but we have to be better. It’s means we have to keep pushing the right buttons.”

The panic button was an option Saturday, but the Kings managed to hold off a collapse after the Wild rallied from a 1-0 deficit.

The Wild began the game on a skid, having lost three of its previous four games. Fernandez was in a slump, with three consecutive losses. The Kings seemed just the thing to alleviate the Wild’s problems.

Fernandez stopped 32 of 34 shots during regulation and overtime, and four more in the shootout, for his first victory since Oct. 27, and the Wild was perched to win the game in regulation after Kurtis Foster banked a shot off defenseman Rob Blake for a 2-1 lead 1 minute 46 seconds into the third period.

But Michael Cammalleri managed to get his alleged 5-foot-9 frame around Martin Skoula, a 6-3 defenseman, and chip in a shot to tie the score 11:14 into the third period.

“That was a great game for us from the standpoint of how we battled,” Crawford said.

And from the standpoint of winning games.

“I still don’t think you’ve seen the best from the Kings,” Conroy said. “It is in us to be better.”

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The Kings claimed Marty Murray, a 31-year-old journeyman center, on waivers from the Philadelphia Flyers.

Defenseman Brent Sopel was put on injured reserve because of a broken right ankle and a broken left hand.

Sopel will be re-evaluated in two weeks.

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