For the past three-plus months, every time the Sacramento Kings visited an Eastern Conference city, they fell short.

The next chance at redemption on the road against an Eastern foe will occur Sunday night when the Kings visit the Brooklyn Nets.

Brooklyn (17-57) has a 10-game losing streak, the longest active skid in the NBA.

Sacramento (19-56) is 6-31 on the road, and its 127-111 win at the Miami Heat on Dec. 6 is among its two away victories over an Eastern Conference team.

Both the Kings and Nets have been eliminated from playoff contention.

In the Kings’ previous road win over the Heat, they started DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, Keegan Murray, Russell Westbrook and Maxime Raynaud. In recent games, only Raynaud and DeRozan saw major minutes as the club turned to younger players to get a gauge of who can help it next season.

Sacramento began its current five-game road trip with a 44-point loss at Charlotte on Tuesday, but the Kings have been vastly more competitive in the past two contests. After dropping a 121-117 decision in Orlando on Thursday, the Kings absorbed a 123-113 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday.

Sacramento rallied from a 16-point deficit in the third quarter to forge a 97-97 tie on Saturday before getting outscored 26-16 the rest of the way.

While DeRozan led the Kings with 22 points and Raynaud added 18 points and 10 rebounds, coach Doug Christie continued to get extensive looks at DaQuan Jeffries and Daeqwon Plowden.

Jeffries is on the team via a 10-day contract in a hardship exception while Plowden has played 25 games as a two-way player. Jeffries added 15 points after making his debut Thursday while Plowden contributed 14 to reach double figures for the 10th consecutive game.

“Ultimately that’s what we want is the ability to dominate from the bench perspective,” Christie said after his reserves totaled 45 points. “It’s something that you need on a night-to-night basis because they either take the lead, blow it up or they get you back in the game.”

Sacramento is 7-10 in its past 17 games following a 16-game skid Jan. 18-Feb. 21. Before dropping the first three games of its trip, the Kings outlasted the Nets 126-122 last Sunday.

The Nets are on their second double-digit skid this season and are 2-20 in their past 22 games. Brooklyn ended a four-game road trip with Friday’s 116-99 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, when it was outscored 31-15 in the fourth quarter.

Josh Minott led the Nets with 18 points while Ziaire Williams added 16. Minott, along with rookies Ben Saraf and Chaney Johnson, played nearly the entire fourth quarter, when the Nets shot 6 of 19 from the field.

“We just struggled right there, but the guys competed all the way through, every single of them, everybody that played tonight, played really hard and did great things,” Nets coach Jordi Fernandez said. “Everybody got better, so you compete like this, you find a lot of positives.”

–Field Level Media

The Chicago Blackhawks are limping to the finish line after showing few positive signs in their third season since selecting superstar center Connor Bedard first overall in the 2023 NHL Draft.

Heading into their matchup on Sunday against the New Jersey Devils in Newark, N.J., the Blackhawks have been outscored 11-2 in back-to-back losses to the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers, keeping them last in the Central Division.

The Flyers are three points out of an Eastern Conference wild-card spot entering play Sunday. The Rangers were the first conference team eliminated from postseason contention when they lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday, two days before they beat the visiting Blackhawks 6-1 to end a six-game losing streak.

Chicago (27-33-13, 67 points) had seven rookies in the lineup against the Rangers.

“We have a whole bunch of guys going through the NHL schedule for the first time, much less this condensed schedule,” Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill said. “It’s a hard challenge for a group that’s as young as we are, but we’ve got to respond to the challenge. We’ve got to take these opportunities to grow and get better.”

The losses to the Flyers and Rangers came on back-to-back nights, the third time since March 8 that the Blackhawks played on consecutive days.

Blashill said fatigue has become a factor.

“You can kind of tell when teams are in a grind a little bit, but I think right now everybody is,” Blashill said. “Part of fatigue is learning how to play smart. We just got to learn to play a little smarter when we’re tired.”

Tyler Bertuzzi said the responsibility of finishing the season strong falls on all the players, rookies and veterans alike.

“I don’t know if it’s just such a young team, immaturity and we can’t put it together, but it’s on everyone,” Bertuzzi said. “It’s on us older guys to show the lead and have them follow. As a group, everyone, the last few games, we have not been good at all.”

Neither the Blackhawks nor the Devils (37-33-2, 76 points) have officially been eliminated from the playoffs, but it’s on the radar.

New Jersey is coming off a 5-2 loss against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday in the finale of a five-game road trip (3-2-0).

Carolina beat the Devils in five games in the first round of the playoffs last season and won all four meetings between the teams this season.

Devils forward Connor Brown said the lack of success against Carolina has frustrated New Jersey and it spilled over into Saturday’s game.

“Some emotions got high and were just handled poorly throughout the game,'” Brown said. “Hockey’s an emotional game. You’re playing at such a high speed. It’s violent. When you have scars against a team, sometimes it can be that much harder to manage. So, it’s a big learning moment for this team. To learn, you have to identify what’s going wrong.”

Jake Allen likely will start in goal for the Devils after Jacob Markstrom made 29 saves against the Hurricanes.

Allen has won two of his past three starts and gave up just one goal on 27 shots in the 2-1 loss to the Washington Capitals.

He’s 12-7-4 in his career against the Blackhawks with a .922 save percentage and 2.35 goals-against average.

–Field Level Media

Mikko Rantanen scored in his first game in nearly two months, and the Dallas Stars tallied three unanswered second-period goals to end a four-game skid and defeat the host Pittsburgh Penguins 6-3 on Saturday.

Rantanen and Jason Robertson each had a goal and an assist for Dallas (44-18-11, 99 points), which had gone 0-3-1 in its last four games. The Stars trailed 1-0 and 2-1 in this contest before exploding for three goals, two on the power play, in the second.

Rookie Justin Hryckowian, Lian Bichsel and Mavrik Bourque also scored for the Stars, who swept the two-game season series with Pittsburgh after winning in Dallas in December.

Erik Karlsson had a goal and two assists for Pittsburgh (36-21-16, 88 points), which was playing without both Evgeni Malkin and captain Sidney Crosby due to lower-body injuries.

Anthony Mantha and Noel Acciari also scored for Pittsburgh, which lost its third game at PPG Paints Arena in the past week. The Penguins were outscored 17-6 in those three home contests.

Mantha redirected a Karlsson slapshot to put Pittsburgh in front on a power-play goal just over two minutes into the game.

Hryckowian evened the score for Dallas early in the second period, capitalizing on a broken play that left him wide open in front of the net with the puck.

Karlsson answered for the Penguins 48 seconds later with a wrister for his 13th goal of the season. In the process, he broke two franchise records for defensemen.

The goal was his ninth in March, the most in a single month by a Penguins blueliner. This also was his ninth multi-point game in March, which broke Randy Carlyle’s mark, set in December 1980, for most multi-point games in a single month by a defenseman.

The Stars responded over the next few minutes. Robertson scored on the power play 7:12 into the period to even the game. It was Robertson’s 40th goal, tying him with Wyatt Johnston for the team lead.

Three minutes later, Rantanen, who had missed 15 games in a row with a lower-body injury, tallied his 21st of the season on another power-play opportunity.

Bichsel doubled the Stars’ advantage less than 90 seconds later on a strange sequence. He went behind the goal, stapled to Karlsson, proceeded to throw the Swede’s stick to the floor with no whistle, and then scored what turned out to be the game-winner.

Jake Oettinger improved to 7-1-0 in his career against Pittsburgh. He allowed three goals on only 12 shots, as Pittsburgh posted four, five and three shots over the three periods. Stuart Skinner made 20 stops for the Penguins.

Dallas, which entered with the fourth-best road record in the league, improved to 22-8-7 away from home.

–Field Level Media