The Kings came out to play Friday night. They almost never play on Fridays. They’ll be back at it on Sunday evening. That’s unusual, too. What wasn’t out of character was their performance. They could get two goals but not the third, and they lost to San Jose in OT....
California has been a tough go for teams from all parts of the country and Canada over the past several years. It’s a common question to teams who visit the Anaheim-LA-San Jose juggernaut whether they’re happy with a split, or even just to get two points. Sometimes,...
The Golden Knights-Kings series has been a goaltending battle for the ages, with each game being decided by one goal in an ascending range. The first, 1-0; the second, 2-1 (OT); the third, 3-2. As the fourth began, the Kings were facing elimination. You might thus...
In a series dominated by two goalies at the peak of their games, it only made sense that Marc-Andre Fleury and Jonathan Quick would do it once more Sunday night with their series returned to LA. Save for save, they matched each other, Quick helped by a goal that...
There wasn’t much to be said in advance of the Ducks-Sharks game on Saturday night except one thing: the Ducks better be better, or there might not be a game five late next week. This could be the end of hockey in Anaheim for the year. They had been terrible two...
Is anybody going to surprise anybody this playoff season? Looking at the matchups, it seems surprisingly easy to call most of the series. That Washington-Columbus one might be a bit sticky, and who knows what Vegas is really capable of, but otherwise, it’s fairly...
Playing for nothing. It’s not just the fate of the non-playoff team. It’s also what haunts the mind of the teams that have clinched but who could move up or down the standings pending the outcome of the last regular-season games. That’s the case for the LA Kings. They...
In the ongoing saga of who wants and who does not want to get into the NHL playoffs from the Western Conference, the Avs blew a point and squeaked a point on Sunday (Anaheim beat them in OT), then headed up the freeway to faceoff with the Kings. Freeway. Faceoff....
Neither team could afford to give up two points. Other teams fighting for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference didn’t want the game to be a three-point affair. That was the story at Honda Center on Sunday night as the Avalanche visited the Ducks at an...
If you were wondering where the Kings-Ducks rivalry went somewhere around 2012, and thought you saw it come back in 2014 when the Kings beat Anaheim in a come-from-behind seven-game win, you probably like this year a ton. The hatred is back. And it’s not just...
What do you think of the mutual opponent hypothesis? What’s that? The idea that if team A and team B each play team C, then whoever does better against team C would do better against the other, as well. If it’s anything to go by, the Anaheim Ducks are in a sweet spot...
It might seem odd to say this. Perhaps even cruel. But here’s the analysis of the Detroit-Ducks game Friday night: A bad team got a mediocre-but-still-hopeful team off its game by distracting them with taunts that led to fights and chippy play that led to penalties....
The Kings let the Red Wings hang around and hang around on Thursday night, playing as if they had all the points to spare in the playoff race. They don’t. The shots opened 6-0 for the Kings, but it took much of the first period to get there. They scored along the way,...
Standing in front of Jonathan Toews in the Chicago dressing room on Saturday in LA, what came to mind in the aftermath of their come from behind spanking of the Kings was this: What makes this team so bad this year? The thought was the result of knowing how they can...
The LA Kings flat blew it on Saturday afternoon with Chicago in town. Not only did they lose to a statistically weaker opponent, they did in in dramatic fashion. After period two, in which Los Angeles poured in three goals, two on egregious turnovers by Chicago, it...
You want to make the playoffs, right, Anaheim Ducks? I mean really, really wanna with all your heart? Well you don’t let a weaker team come into our building and score with thirteen seconds gone in the first period off a turnover that your captain makes. At center...
It was a sad night in SoCal Saturday. Sad, and a little bit pathetic. The two NHL teams, like Casey at the bat, struck out. For no good reason, because each of them was playing a team either below them or significantly below them in the standings. And both lost and...
Anaheim Ducks fans love their number seven, Andrew Cogliano. They thought the two-game suspension which ended his consecutive-games streak a ripoff. They were right about that. But Lord love him, if this guy’s hands were any more stony, he’d never be able to floss his...
The Ducks beat the Oilers in Anaheim on Friday night, and all anyone could do after the game was talk about Connor McDavid. Could this be because on the first series of plays in the game he grabbed a puck and went to the right of the Ducks’ zone, then burst around Cam...
It looked to be a boring game with few shots and an easy win for the home team in Los Angeles Wednesday night. The Kings opened a lead with just over a minute gone. Here’s the situation: right off a faceoff, the puck went from center to Kyle Clifford. He zipped a...
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Sure, you’re tempted to ask the easy question—can the Ducks make the playoffs? Sure they can. Ask the hard question: can the Ducks compete? They got partway to answering that on Thursday night versus the Winnipeg Jets. So how would they make it?...
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- The coach of the other local NHL team, John Stevens of the LA Kings, used the “blender” metaphor last week to describe the changes his team needed to make to jolt themselves into scoring some goals. But it was Randy Carlyle of the Ducks who really...
The San Jose Sharks defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins last week. Just like the Anaheim Ducks did. The San Jose Sharks defeated the LA Kings last week. Just like the Anaheim Ducks did. Thus an Anaheim-San Jose matchup looked to be a pretty good battle, maybe even an...
For all the hype, none of the pertinent questions about the Kings and Ducks were easily answered Friday night. And especially not the one Kings fans wanted answered: Where’s the offense? Invisible, in the form of many of the key players. In fact, before the first...
The LA Kings played decent hockey for periods of Thursday’s game versus the Pittsburgh Penguins. But with talent like that on the other side of the ice, that’s not good enough. LA ended up on the short end of a 3-1 score, losing for the fifth time in a row. They...
Three or fewer. That’s how many penalties Randy Carlyle of the Ducks has as his goal for the team. They exceeded that by a factor of two, taking six for twelve minutes of disadvantage, against Colorado on Monday. The Avs scored one power play goal in the game....
Sunny Monday in January, probably in the 70s. Why not play NHL hockey? That’s what the Kings and Sharks were saying by the very act of dropping the puck at 1pm on January 15th. I took the train—no point in getting into late afternoon Los Angeles traffic on the way...
The Ducks battled the Kings Saturday night in a not-unimportant game. Anaheim was coming off a loss to Calgary, and the Kings had lost two straight—to Calgary and the Predators. The Ducks had gained points in four of five games, including three wins. The Kings had...
Christian Folin of the Kings was back from IR. Nashville was in town. That was the news from the LA Kings on Saturday night. If that sounds like nothing much, then you’re used to this new-look Kings team that has rolled through half their season having gained 53...
Three fights in one period. It needn’t be said that you rarely see that any more. But Saturday night in LA, it was the perfect storm. Retribution needed to be had for a nasty hit that Kurtis MacDermid put on Ondrej Kase of the Ducks when they played early in the month...
