The Wings had their Monday night game with Anaheim well in hand. They were ahead by a pair of goals, and they were continuing to dominate the play towards the end of the second period. But then the Ducks came to life, and they got up by a 3-2 score after having been...
The Anaheim Ducks romped through the West of Canada (in a kind of mini way) on the weekend, winning games in Calgary on Friday evening and Edmonton on Saturday. The score in Calgary was 6-3, and the one in Edmonton, 2-1. Meanwhile, the Detroit Red Wings were playing...
The Kings got some help without even asking for it in the form of Boston beating Calgary Monday night. Wait. That was to be the headline, and when I headed upstairs to the Staples Center pressbox, the Bruins seemed to have the Flames well in hand, up 3-0 with little...
Corey Perry recorded ten shots, the Ducks lost two key players, and Alex Ovechkin romped over them. That’s pretty much the story from Anaheim on Sunday night. Here’s what’s significant about each of those. First, Perry. His linemates, who right now are Getzlaf and...
Jeff Carter put it simply on Thursday night, explaining how his team won their game versus Calgary: “It’s simple hockey, really. It starts below the puck, and you don’t cheat on defense to get offense.” That system seems like it demands speed, because if you’re back...
Efficiency. Expending only the amount of effort one needs to to get the job done. That’s great if you’re talking about your home AC unit or (if you’re not a car guy) your chariot. But if you’re a hockey team, and what you do is observed by some number of tens of...
The LA Kings were going to exit Wednesday out of the playoffs no matter what they managed to do against the Chicago Blackhawks. They entered the night at 52 points, three behind Calgary for the West’s last wildcard spot. Their one advantage was a game in hand on the...
Rob Blake joined Rogie Vachon, Dave Taylor, Marcel Dionne, Luc Robitaille, and Wayne Gretzky amongst the rafters at Staples Center on Saturday night. The guys hang out up there most of the time, watching today’s players trying to duplicate their feats of hockey...
What year is this? Lou Lamoriello is standing behind the New Jersey bench coaching a team that is playing Scott Gomez against Ilya Bryzgalov in net—for the Anaheim Ducks. If you said 2006, you’d be right. And wrong. Because that was the oddity of the game featuring...
Regular readers of NHL media information probably know more than they need to about the Eastern Conference teams. Why is that? Because despite the fact that the Stanley Cup has been won by the West in six of the last ten years and four of the last five, the media is...
With the Leafs in town to take on the Kings Monday (and the Ducks Wednesday), it seems like a good time to ask that pressing question: What’s up with the Toronto franchise, which again seems like it’s mired in the muck as another coach has departed and the...
The Ducks retired Selanne’s number, as I earlier reported at IH, but here are some more details about the evening. The event was attended by a number of dignitaries, including the Ducks’ owners, the Samuelis, and Gary Bettman, who was roundly booed whenever his...
It’s hard to overestimate the impact a player like Teemu Selanne has on the hockey culture of a city. But I’m pretty sure that if you measured the temperature (not literally) of Winnipeg and Anaheim today, you’d get an idea of how much he’s meant to both places....
So the Kings finally made a lineup switch. Two, in fact, with Winnipeg coming in for a Saturday night contest which started, due to TV obligations, at 7pm rather than the familiar 7:30. The switches? First, Jamie McBain was out on defense, and Brayden McNabb...
The Kings are a remarkably consistent team. Their lineup rarely changes, except when someone gets hurt. They don’t even shift up their forward lines all that often. That’s only partly why I don’t feel so bad having left you in the dark for a couple of weeks while I...
I got out of Toronto this week just before the Maple Leafs fired their coach, an event which has caused a hubbub of opinion ranging from, “About time,” to “What now?” Truth be told, most pundits and fans knew that the move was coming. But much of the hockey discussion...
Perhaps it’s just that we’re partway into the year and all the main stories have been told, but the media surrounding the LA Kings this week has focused on players other than the stars. Here are some updates related to the depth of the roster. Mike Richards is...
All it takes is one save to make a career. Exaggeration? Maybe, but it’s one save repeatedly made, a great one, that has made Jonathan Quick the hero of the LA Kings nation. Monday night, he did it once more. Here’s the setup. The Bruins were in town after...
“This was clearly a mistake on our part and we accept full responsibility. It is incumbent upon us to be more vigilant in managing this situation to ensure that Slava’s allowable training activities always remain separate from the team.” That’s what the LA...
The twins were split up! That was the big news on Saturday as the Ducks went down 5-1 against San Jose after dropping a weak and uncoordinated effort to Chicago on Friday last. The reason Getzlaf and Perry were playing on different lines? To get them going, of course....
The Ducks have at least one thing to be thankful for this Black Friday. They’ve played 16 times in their team history on this day, and won nine of them. They’ve also lost four and tied three. Oh, there’s also the sunshine and the fact that it was 80 degrees outside...
The Anaheim Ducks felt they had enough D-men this week and shipped one, Bryan Allen, to Montreal for reclamation project Rene Bourque. The winger, who has over 140 goals in his decade-plus career, was lately in Hamilton with the Bulldogs after having cleared waivers...
Carolina came into LA Thursday night eighth in the East’s wildcard race. That means they were way out of the playoffs. And they didn’t have the excuse of having games in hand. They just haven’t won much this year yet, and most people who comment on their progress are...
Hockey in Florida. Dumb idea, right? Well, people often say so. Except that each team from the state has been in the Stanley Cup Final, one a winner (Tampa Bay) and the other a loser (Florida). Now here the two teams are making some noise in the East, with the...
Every year about this time, the Kings experience what psychiatrists would call a “fugue,” which is a time when someone suffers from loss of memory, begins a new life, and when she or he recovers, doesn’t remember the period of amnesia. Yes, friends, once again,...
I’m going to steal a joke from my friend Dennis Bernstein, writer for www.thefourthperiod.com, who said on twitter that the way the Kings are going, signing defensemen, their next one will be McFlurry. That’s because they’ve recently added McNabb and McBain, the...
Sunday night, the Anaheim Ducks looked to put a whumping on the Canucks something like the Kings had done 23 hours prior, when they’d beaten them 5-1 and chased Ryan Miller from the crease after two periods. They figured to be helped by two things: that Miller...
You know that saying, “Fifty is the new forty”? How about “red is the new black?” What about “Vancouver is the new Toronto”? In hockey terms, that’s just what’s happening. Here’s what I mean. Year after year, the Leafs’ games are played with promising...
SoCal NHL teams have made their doctors rich(er) this week, as both the Kings and the Ducks have been rolling sick wards in the past few days. The Kings’ woes were detailed in my story last night after their shootout loss to the Islanders. Now it’s the Ducks....
Can the LA Kings score goals? Not exactly. In their last six games, they’ve notched totals of 2-0-2-2-3-1. Can they score goals with Marian Gaborik in their lineup? Better question. But still, the answer’s no. The great catalyst of the 2014 playoffs is just back after...
