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...
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...
