You want to know the measure of a person? It’s not about what he or she does. It’s about how that person treats other people. Bob Miller is, in the special way that broadcasters of local sports teams can be, famous. Way more people know who he is than vice versa. I’m...
Well, not nothing exactly, at the LA Kings game Thursday evening. In fact, some kinda bizarre line combinations. How about the Carter-Toffoli-Pearson line all split up so that each was on one of the first three lines? How about a fourth line of Kempe, Brodzinski, and...
When your playoff hopes are hanging by a thread, you’ll try anything. That’s perhaps why Darryl Sutter called a coach’s challenge on Arizona’s first goal Sunday night. Desperation turned to actuality, though, when it appeared (to the linesmen) that the puck had...
Reporters crowding the Anaheim Ducks locker room after their 6-3 win versus the Rangers Sunday night wanted to read things this way: The team is clicking; Bob Murray is a genius for bringing in Patrick Eaves, who is knocking it out of the park on a line with Rakell...
The Rangers, from a distance, look like a big team. Physically big. Like it would be hard to get the puck off them. Perhaps that’s why the Kings made so many mistakes against them in the early going of their game in LA on Saturday night. The most egregious—Gaborik at...
And so we pick up the thread of last week, when the Ducks celebrated the 10th anniversary of their Stanley Cup . . . Fan favorite Giguere was so kind. He talked a little bit about goalie gear, but then I steered him to the Cup. “I wouldn’t say I think of it every day,...
Well, Sutter finally said it: “We took a lot of shots; we always do. Guys don’t have shots, that usually means they’re not quite on their game, but the team we were playing blocks a lot of shots and gets in shooting lanes. We’re not a team that’s going to score a lot...
What do guys do after hockey? If they’ve won a Stanley Cup, they think about it. A lot. At least, that’s what’s true of the Ducks players who together hoisted the trophy in 2007. Eighteen of them gathered on Sunday to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their win. They...
The LA Kings are hanging by a thread, not thanks to them, but thanks to their now-archrival, St. Louis, who beat the Ducks in the last minute Friday, then whacked the Islanders on Saturday before the LA-Washington game began at 7:30 California time. That meant that...
“Hello, LA Kings? Remember that goal you scored on Thursday by banking it off a Toronto defenseman’s head? We’re taking it back.” That must have been what happened for the Canucks to jump out to a 2-0 lead versus LA on Saturday night. The second goal saw Henrik Sedin...
You wouldn’t normally think of the Anaheim Ducks and the Toronto Maple Leafs as having much to do with one another. But on Friday night with the Canadian team in town, the crossovers were hard to miss. Mike Babcock, the Leafs’ coach? Took the Ducks to the Stanley Cup...
Surprise! They yell it when you enter your front door and a birthday party previously unbeknownst to you is about to commence. They yelled at Staples Center, too, only this wasn’t any birthday party. It was a coming out party—Jonathan Quick was back! Was it...
In the end, it was Jonathan Bernier’s game. He, after all, made the two spectacular saves against the Bruins in Anaheim. They looked like this: In period two, the puck went from goalie’s left to right across the low slot. Bernier moved with it, but the side of the net...
The Kings and Ducks are in playoff races, with the latter being much more assured that all will end well than the former. Sunday night, they played each other. Several stories competed for attention while the teams competed for the win. I’ll give them to you here; you...
The Kings have come home. After playing nine of ten games away, they have played two at home. Things haven’t gone well. In fact, they didn’t go all that great on the road, either, though during one stretch in ten games including Saturday versus Florida in LA, they won...
How easy it must be to be discouraged if you’re Colorado. You’ve lost nine in a row and 19 of 21 (sparing one OT point). You really, really suck on defense. Your primary goalie is out, and the guy you use on the second night of a back-to-back barely has his feet on...
What are the Anaheim Ducks looking for? Consistency. They’ve obviously been drilled to think that over the past few days, because it’s the message that many of them were reciting in their press interviews early in the week. Did they learn anything about that versus...
By now you’ve seen the NHL All-Star game, and you know that the Pacific, which looked to be the most loaded squad, lost a narrow decision to the Metropolitan. So close it was that a skate save decided it. Kesler took the shot, and it was aimed at evening the game with...
What’s 91 + 94? The answer isn’t 185, though that’s what the math would say. It’s the sum of the hockey affection of Robert Benedict and his son Tyler. They and Sam Black were at the Classic Auto Show in LA on Sunday morning. Tyler had a Blues Tarasenko sweater on....
“Kesler’s in the house.” Booooo! That was the reaction of the crowd at Staples Center on Saturday afternoon, understandably many of whom were Kings partisans. But when Kesler went in on Carey Price, deked and put one through the Canadiens goalie’s legs, the crowd went...
“So much to see and do.” What a cliché, but how true of deep downtown LA, where the NHL All-Star game has taken over. And it’s not like nobody noticed. Where else could you see palm trees and Alexander Ovechkin on a giant replica puck set against the background of...
Tampa Bay played Monday afternoon in LA. They faced what they, and every other team, described as a “big, tough, skating” Kings squad, and they won, 2-1. It was a decent performance against a team that may be big and physical but can’t score goals worth a darn. That,...
"Kopitar’s sick. Quick, everyone scamble to figure out a plan!" That must have been the cry at Staples Center Monday morning before a super-rare 1pm start against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Maybe even the Lightning themselves said it. Two things happened: the loss of...
Judging by twitter (don’t stop reading, please), Jets fans love to hate their team. Now I know that that’s not exclusive to them, but with Winnipeg folks, it seems more intense somehow. Take Saturday night. The twitter feed with Winnipeg in town to play the Kings went...
What a difference a couple of days make. Or three. Monday night, the Kings were in LA versus Dallas. They posted four goals and still lost the game on a goaltending performance that was mediocre. In fact, even the visiting goalie was pretty stinky, and got pulled....
Goal scoring is good, and I'm the first to say I'd love to take NHL goalies to the car wash, hose off all their extra equipment, and put them back in to the net less as marshmallow men, so that shooters have some space to hit. But on Tuesday night, the Ducks played...
Forget analysis. Here’s pure impression about what happened in LA on Monday night with Dallas in town. You decide at the end if what I saw corresponds to your stats-happy, super-fancy way of looking at the game. First period. Jordan Nolan seemed like he was never off...
You’d think Bruce Boudreau won a Cup in Anaheim, so many stories were written about his return to SoCal this week with the Minnesota Wild. They all can be condensed to roughly the same thing: having lost four game sevens in a row, he got canned. He may or may not have...
Look at the LA Kings’ record over the past six games, and things are pretty ho-hum. Three wins, three losses, including a 4-3 OT victory on Saturday mid-day versus Minnesota. But stretch it back a little further, say a dozen contests, and you’ve got a different...
No particular plan. That’s what Guy Boucher said Saturday that he had going for Sunday with his team having lost to LA and heading down I-5 to Anaheim for Sunday. No plan? They’d had two full days off after winning against San Jose midweek. Now, maybe playing the...
