{"id":517845,"date":"2026-03-23T04:07:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T04:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/517845\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T04:07:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T04:07:49","slug":"kings-lose-to-sabres-fall-out-of-final-wild-card-spot-in-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/517845\/","title":{"rendered":"Kings lose to Sabres, fall out of final wild-card spot in West"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Zach Benson had a goal and an assist and the Buffalo Sabres continued their white-hot play with a 4-1 win<\/a> over the Kings<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Tage Thompson, Sam Carrick and Rasmus Dahlin also scored for the Sabres.<\/p>\n

Carrick and Dahlin scored 59 seconds apart midway through the third period, and Benson added an empty-netter to give the Sabres their fourth straight win and 12th in the past 13 outings. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 26 saves.<\/p>\n

Buoyed by significant and vocal support despite being the visitors, the Sabres continued their push for an Atlantic Division title as they are on their way to ending a 14-year playoff drought, the longest in the NHL.<\/p>\n

Artemi Panarin<\/a> scored, picking up a point for the fifth straight game. Anze Kopitar<\/a> tied Marcel Dionne for the Kings franchise record for points on home ice, and Anton Forsberg<\/a> made 28 saves.<\/p>\n

The Kings (28-25-16) came into the day as the second wild card in the Western Conference but dropped behind the Nashville Predators, who won 4-1 over the Vegas Golden Knights.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

The Kings started strong. Panarin continued the productive start to his Kings tenure by opening the scoring with a power-play goal midway through the first period. He has five goals and 11 assists in 13 games for the Kings. It was the first goal the Sabres had allowed on the road in 176 minutes of game action, including consecutive shutouts at Vegas and San Jos\u00e9.<\/p>\n

But Buffalo (44-20-6) came back to control the final two periods, with a failed coach\u2019s challenge by the Kings for a high stick in the build up before Carrick\u2019s slick backhand leading to Dahlin\u2019s power-play goal.<\/p>\n

Up next for the Kings: at Utah on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zach Benson had a goal and an assist and the Buffalo Sabres continued their white-hot play with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5126],"tags":[3039,8267,229,654,436,5,816,60247,186,1760,240,5303,793,145,5304,5302,4,343,4308,4011,4252,1108,5920,12786,4023],"class_list":["post-517845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-kings","tag-artemi-panarin","tag-assist","tag-buffalo-sabres","tag-game","tag-goal","tag-hockey","tag-king","tag-king-franchise-record","tag-kings","tag-la","tag-la-kings","tag-lakings","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-losangeles","tag-losangeleskings","tag-nhl","tag-point","tag-power-play-goal","tag-rasmus-dahlin","tag-sabre","tag-sabres","tag-sam-carrick","tag-save","tag-zach-benson"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116276527893971337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}