One team playing in Anaheim on Friday afternoon had clearly celebrated Thanksgiving the day before, if their early slumber on the ice was a fair indication. That would be the home team, who found themselves down by a pair of goals before the game was five minutes old....
On Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya’s night, it was a goaltender who stole the show. John Gibson played a fantastic, 50-save game in keeping the Ducks ahead of the Florida Panthers 3-2 Sunday. He was happy about the results after the game, as he should have been, though...
The LA Kings began the year like a house on fire. By which I do not in any way refer to the actual houses that caught on fire in the North of the state. No, it was their record that blazed. They tied a franchise record for most points in their first fifteen games....
Anze Kopitar has scored a point in the last nine games (prior to Thursday), the longest such streak of his career. The Kings have lost four of those games, won one, and gained an OT point. The last three, though, they’ve lost, including a stinker to Vancouver on...
No disrespect to Paul Kariya. That’s what I’m supposed to write just before I tell you that he shouldn’t be going in to the Hall of Fame. Not this year. Not with Teemu Selanne. Right? I’m not saying he should never be there. There are cases like his—Cam Neely, Eric...
Anaheim's John Gibson was unavailable for comment after Sunday night’s game versus the Lightning in which the Ducks gave up 37 shots, took 29, and lost 2-1. Had it not been for Gibson, it would have been 5-1. Or worse. Definitely, it would have been much worse. It...
LOS ANGELES – The Kings have handily outclassed Eastern Conference teams this season, going 9-1-0 against them thus far. Their only loss was on the road in Toronto. Thursday, they repaid the Leafs with a victory at home. The game saw Toronto plagued by...
Las Vegas, NV – Hockey people not from here keep saying the same thing: Vegas hockey is about everyone else but the people in Vegas. It’s a place that’s good at attracting tourists, and having a hockey team will be just one more way to bring people from elsewhere to...
So much happens in the Vegas Golden Knights in-arena game presentation that it doesn’t seem like there could be more spectacle than there is. And then there is. The excitement begins before the game, in the form of a question from a dominating male voice: “Are you...
Los Angeles—Drew Doughty scored late in the third period and Jonathan Quick made 23 saves as the Los Angeles Kings defeated the Buffalo Sabres 4-2 on Saturday at Staples Center. The team was celebrating Halloween early, since they'll be on the road for that last...
The Anaheim Ducks showed little of the urgency they needed to prolong their 25-game home unbeaten streak against the Calgary Flames, and it cost them the win at Honda Center Monday night. In fact, neither team lit up the scoreboard as Calgary scampered to a 2-0...
A revitalized Los Angeles Kings team under new coach John Stevens took on a Philadelphia Flyers squad that had played in San Jose the night before and started off the season with a win. For the Kings, it was a good start to what some have seen as a more-of-the-same...
The Los Angeles Kings are looking for more scoring this year, hoping to better last season’s points total and erase the memories of not making the playoffs in 2017. They got hopeful signs via a pair of goals from Michael Cammalleri along with five points from their...
It took almost a full period just to figure out who was playing with whom on Saturday afternoon in Anaheim. Of course the whole (hockey) world knows that the Preds were without Johansen and Fisher. But the Ducks had a surprise loss of their own, Rickard Rakell going...
Bobby Ryan needs his a$$ kicked. I’m not saying that as someone who isn’t happy for Ryan’s success this playoff season. I’m saying that because he’s just the latest player to deliver a big hit to a vulnerable opponent, which happened in Friday’s game in Ottawa. The...
The following makes sense: Ducks fans don’t care how their team came back from a 2-0 deficit on Sunday night to even the series with the Predators. They only care that they did it. Nothing else about this game is decipherable at all. Just to get to an overview of the...
The story was supposed to write itself: the Predators would come in rested and confident, having dispatched the number one seed as well as another favorite in some minds. They wouldn’t have played since Sunday. And they’d be hungry, having never gone this deep in the...
In the end, it wasn’t a bitterly disappointed Edmonton team that spoke to the media after their game seven loss on Wednesday night in Anaheim. It was a group that said the things they might have been expected to, centered mostly around the fact that they are taking...
When I saw both Edmonton and Anaheim fans filing out of the arena seats with about five minutes to go in the third period on Friday night, I thought of the rule we used to talk about in my Montreal neighborhood. It went like this: “Always get there for the warm-up....
Could Edmonton’s supporting cast come up as big as they had in game one of the series with Anaheim? This was one question that needed answering on Friday night. No. But they wouldn’t need to, because as Todd McLellan said afterwards, “Every night you need a hero, and...
The storylines coming in were simple: the Ducks needed to contain McDavid, and they had just the guy to do it—Ryan Kesler. The Ducks needed to get their defense mobile again, and they had just the right guy returning—Fowler. And the Oilers needed their secret weapon,...
“Still can’t win here,” the Calgary Flames must have been saying to themselves Saturday night after losing 3-2 in Anaheim, and nobody could quite explain why afterwards. Their coach, Glen Gulutzan, was stymied by a non-call, a disallowed goal that would have put them...
“You can’t win here!” Say that in a singsong chant, and you have the sentiments of the fans at Honda Center in Anaheim plus what it felt like to be amongst them Thursday night wrapped up into one. They were taunting the Calgary Flames—both fans and players—who were in...
Though they said after they’d done it that they didn’t care all that much for winning the Pacific Division title, the Ducks pushed to the end, including OT, and got the banner. They did it in a penalty-filled game that lacked the intensity it might have had, since...
He saw his first game from there when he was two months old, though he didn’t know it of course. I know, though, because I’m his uncle, and I held him while he and his dad and I watched the Red Wings (on TV) win the Stanley Cup in 2002. It would be just the first of a...
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...
