“Those guys we’ve been mourning lately were people whom I remember. Tony Esposito was someone I worshipped.” That’s what I said to my friend Manny yesterday in response to his condolences on the occasion of Tony O’s passing at age 78. The people I was referencing were...
Monday night the St. Louis Blues came to LA to play a game that is like the others remaining in the season for the Kings, playing out the string. The teams battled, though not furiously, to a 2-1 score. Nothing was doing for the first two periods, with neither team...
It was another night of losing for SoCal NHL teams, albeit with some warm and hopeful moments thrown in. That latter point applies to the Anaheim Ducks, whose netminder, Ryan Miller, was finally playing his last-ever game. This after an emotional tribute from the...
In a game otherwise unremarkable, Anze Kopitar made history by gaining his 1000th NHL point, all with the LA Kings, on Wednesday night in Arizona. Kopitar has never won a scoring title, but that reflects his all-around game. Don’t forget, he won his Cups under the...
And then there was one. Point to go to 1000, that is. Anze Kopitar is the player in question, and he entered Monday night at 997. He got 998 on the Kings' first goal versus the Coyotes in Arizona. He then added an assist on a goal by Alex Iafallo to make it 999. Would...
Not with a bang, but a whimper. More TS Eliot for you (see Saturday’s story for the initial Eliot reference). So the Ducks had the chance to beat St. Louis on Monday night. That had no significance of its own, but it would have kept the Kings from advancing in their...
The speaker in TS Eliot’s “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” says at one point, “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,/I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker/And in short, I was afraid.” Ryan Miller has no reason to fear. His greatness...
Big save Dave. Forget that guy. He's way up there in Toronto. What about Big Save Jonathan? Quick, I’m talking about, a one-man show in Anaheim with his Kings playing there Friday night. The shots were terribly lopsided, and the chances too (11-2 in period two...
Until Wednesday night, only three players drafted in the first round in 2020, a draft held in October, had debuted in the league. Make that four following the game night as Quinton Byfield, #2 pick overall by the LA Kings, got into his first NHL game. He started with...
The LA Kings had no choice but to win Monday night. They’d better do the same for the next three games, too—all of those, including Monday, against the Anaheim Ducks. The first of the four was in LA, and the Kings had on their purple retro sweaters adorned with gold...
The Anaheim Ducks had no answer for the Las Vegas Golden Knights Saturday night in front of approximately ten percent of the usual Honda Center crowd. But then again, they weren’t supposed to. Entering the night, the Ducks were 3-6-1 in their last ten games and on a...
East Coasters and Canadian Division fans don’t much know or care what’s happening out West, it seems. Most have assumed that the fourth spot (after Vegas and Colorado, already in, and Minnesota, a lock at 63 points) will go to the Blues. Don’t look now, but they don’t...
You’d be forgiven if you thought the LA Kings were mixed up as their game versus the Vegas Golden Knights began. They were without one of their core, Jeff Carter, for the second game. That could have meant that management had given up on this year and decided to...
So much for the rumour mill. I spelled that in Canadian style, by the way, to make the point that rumors and hockey players don’t mix. Yesterday afternoon amongst SoCal hockey fans, people had Dustin Brown going somewhere—to the Islanders, to Toronto? Jonathan Quick...
One team entered Friday night coming off a big 5-1 win, the other off an 8-3 loss. So one was saying “We gotta keep the momentum” and the other one “We need to turn things around.” The losers had been Colorado, the winners Anaheim, and here they were, in SoCal, to...
The LA Kings play the Arizona Coyotes five of their last 20 games, a string that started Monday night in Los Angeles. This is not insignificant when the Arizona team is holding down the fourth spot in the West, the final playoff spot. Now, to be fair, the Kings aren’t...
The Anaheim Ducks took on the Colorado Avalanche Sunday evening in a game that, like all the remaining ones this year, meant less to the Ducks and a lot more to the opponent. At least things happened in somewhat spectacular fashion. The two teams have now played...
Here’s a SoCal cliché: You can go skiing in the morning and surfing in the afternoon. This is pure BS. To get to the snow, you’d have to drive up to Arrowhead. That’s an hour and a half minimum. Then you’ve gotta line up and get a lift ticket. Actually do the skiing....
It was a bottom-four night in the Honda West as each of the teams which came into the night out of the playoffs was playing one of the other similar teams. Respectively, they were Arizona, on 37 points; LA, with 34; San Jose, also 34; and Anaheim, resting at 27. The...
Here we were again, mid-Sunday afternoon, Vegas in town to play the Kings. Local time 3pm. The NASCAR race from Atlanta still finishing up on TV. And LA hoping to avenge a 4-2 Friday night loss and keep their playoff hopes alive. They’d had the chance to pull within...
Two nights ago, it was all rainbows and puppies, as Dallas Eakins might have said. (If you’ve been following my coverage of the Anaheim team here at Inside Hockey, you get this.) The Ducks had won, in comeback fashion. They had seen a rookie play his first game and...
The LA Kings have been on a bit of a run of late. Coming into Friday night with Vegas in town, they had points in 13 of 17 games. They beat St. Louis at home on Wednesday night, and came into the game sitting fifth in the division, three points behind those same...
Arizona was in Anaheim Thursday night for the first of two games versus the Ducks. They didn’t have to do much to get the lead, because on two shots they had two goals, the second one going in at 7:07. Ryan Miller was in net, as he has been in three of the Ducks’...
The Blues should have been playing the Kings for the second of a two-game set Wednesday night, but for snow. Snow? LA? This sounds like a “dog ate my homework” excuse. Well, according to the local freebie paper in the LA-area city where I live, there was once snow ...
Dallas Eakins said after Friday’s terrible loss to San Jose that he doesn’t like to make personnel decisions directly following a game. He likes to sleep on it. He did that, and came back Saturday with a lineup that inserted David Backes, Troy Terry, and Danton Heinen...
A year on, the social aspects of covering hockey are a lot of what I miss due to the restrictions currently in place. Seeing the scouts, most of whom are former players, often men I idolized as a kid. Knowing the guys on the Anaheim Ducks Off-ice Officials crew,...
Do you remember when the Kings and Ducks renewing their rivalry meant something? This year, unfortunately, fans in the East, let alone Canada, seem neither to know much about what’s going on on the West coast, nor to care. Maybe that’s the fault of these teams....
The LA Kings hosted the St. Louis Blues on Friday night, and they were promptly disadvantaged by a David Perron power play goal, scored at 2:08 of period one. This after having had a six-game winning streak dashed by a three-game losing streak (with one OT point) that...
Anaheim’s best period thus far this year has been the second. That’s why it was barely OK that they gave up what had been a solid lead in shots and chances and a 1-0 score as period one ended versus the Blues on Monday night. The give-up came with 56.9 seconds...
John Gibson came in rested, having not played since Tuesday. This was Saturday, when the Ducks had Vegas in town for an evening contest. The Anaheim team took a 1-0 lead at about the ten-minute mark but lost it late in the first period. Nothing new there. The team...
