The fans were buzzing. The action was immediate. The teams traded leads as the game went on. You think I’m talking about Kings versus Ducks, the game that took place on Sunday at 5pm in Anaheim? Not a chance. I’m hyping the Mets-Dodgers game that more than a few in Honda Center were keeping track of on their phones. At the very least, that other game, 25 miles or so up the road, featured offense. The one in Anaheim, not so much.
What’s new? Ask that of most people, and you’ll get a “not much” in response. Ask it in the Anaheim Ducks’ orbit, and you’ll get a little more, from player news to news off the ice.
So what is the EIHL anyway? It’s tempting to call it the English Ice Hockey League, except that they have a more grandiose name for themselves, with the first “E” standing for “Elite.”
The day I left Winnipeg after being on the spot for the introduction of Jets 2.0, in 2009, every section of the local paper had a story on the team. Every one, not just sports. On Saturday, April 20th, when I opened the British papers expecting to find something about the EIHL (Elite Ice Hockey League) Playoff weekend, I found exactly nothing.
The LA Kings are hurting, which is to say, they have some key players on IR. Primary amongst those were day-to-day Adrian Kempe and Mikey Anderson on Thursday night, with Ottawa having made their way up the freeway from a game in Anaheim the night before.
The Ducks’ and Kings’ arenas are maybe 30 miles apart, though nobody speaks of miles here. Rather, it’s time. On the weekends, it’s possible for me to get from downtown LA, where I reported on the LA-New Jersey game, to Anaheim, with a stop at home to walk the dog, all in time for the twin Canadian-American national anthems, sung just past 5pm at Honda Center.
Beware the backhand. In another day, one’s father would not allow the purchase of a curved stick because it was a sure way to weaken the backhand. If my dad had talked to Cam Talbot fifteen seconds into the game against New Jersey in Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon, he would have had all the proof he needed for his theory.
Bye bye, Frank. What a shame that your year of excellence playing in Anaheim has to result in a move elsewhere, but that’s what it looks like is going to happen. So goes the mourning song of Anaheim Ducks fans, who have been lucky to observe Frank Vatrano’s scoring highlights in this season of loss.
Anaheim, CA – Nashville isn’t quite there, yet. Where? In the premier group of teams who will make the playoffs with reasonable expectations of a run. They did hold a wildcard spot as of Sunday evening and their game with the Ducks in SoCal, by two points over both St. Louis and Minnesota.
Two nights prior to this one, more than two dozen scouts showed up to watch the LA Kings take on, and lose to, the Nashville Predators. Now here it was, Saturday, and everybody seemed to have better things to do. Just three pro scouts were in the usual front-row seats in the Kings’ arena’s press box.
Welcome, new guy. Do you need to know how to get from parking spot to coach’s office? No? Wait. Haven’t I met you somewhere before? Hey—you were with the Kings, right? As a player back in the 1990s? Played 40 games and scored six goals on the way to a 63-game, eight-goal career?
Honoring the past while still in the present—that’s what the Kings did Wednesday night as present-day captain, Anze Kopitar, was feted in a brief ceremony before the team’s game versus Buffalo. He returned the favor by going straight out and scoring the game’s first goal, his 15th of the year and 408th career goal.
Sunday, the Ducks managed to perpetuate the frustration of the New York Rangers, carried over from a 2-1 loss to the LA Kings and, before that, a 5-1 dumping by the Vegas team. This happened on Sunday late afternoon into the evening while most of the country, and probably Canada, was watching the NFL. How bad was it for the Rangers?
Something’s gotta change. That is evident when it comes to the LA Kings, though what that something is, is up for question. Coming into Saturday’s game versus the New York Rangers, the team had lost nine of ten games. More precisely, going back to late December, they won three of four, then lost eight in a row, won one, and then lost two more.
What team wouldn’t be better with Patrick Kane playing on it at his best? The question when he signed on with the Detroit Red Wings after the season was underway was whether he would be the old Kane, the one who is pacing at more than a point-a-game clip over a career that has seen him suit up almost 1200 times.
Are the Ducks finally getting to where they can hang with better teams? Their recent games, all losses, have been close, so that was the hope. It was also the early appearance of things Friday night with the Jets in town. The story was what it has been: John Gibson held Anaheim in early, and the Ducks backed up his play with some big hits.
The Anaheim Ducks are close to intact once more, by which is meant that all of Zegras, McTavish, and Drysdale are in the lineup, off of IR visits lasting anywhere from most of a season (Jamie Drysdale), to a few weeks (Trevor Zegras), and a few games (Mason McTavish). Saturday evening, this newly complete lineup battled the Seattle Kraken.
The Colorado Avalanche went west on the weekend, hoping for four points and ending up with one. What happened, and what does the disparity in style of play they experienced say about what will work in the playoffs, when they arrive?
It’s going to be a long while, maybe a couple of years, before people will attend a Washington Capitals game with the words, “maybe tonight” on their tongues. That phrase, of course, will refer to the quest of the “Great Eight,” Alexander Ovechkin, to become the greatest goal scorer of all time in the NHL.
People from all over North America turned up in Southern California last week chasing their beloved Montreal Canadiens, hoping to see the team in person. After the first of these games, Montreal goalie Sam Montembeault told IH, “It’s crazy. Everywhere we go we’ve got Montreal fans. Here like two hours, two hours twenty before the game, the bus was entering the parking, and there were some Canadiens Habs jerseys in the parking lot.”
The Anaheim Ducks have played at mid-day on Black Friday for years. It used to be that Chicago was the opponent, and the lore was, “They’re on their circus trip,” by which it was meant that the Blackhawks were vacating their arena so that the circus could take up residence. I’m not sure what’s happened to that, but this year, the Ducks were hosting their cross-town rivals, the LA Kings.
A week or so ago, the Anaheim Ducks were on a roll, coming off a successful road trip. Now they’re spending American Thanksgiving week at home, and things aren’t so super. They’d lost two games in a row coming into Sunday, when the Blues were in town for a 5pm start. By the end of the game, make that three losses in a row as they went down, 3-1. Why did this happen?
Legacy Night, Volume 1, was celebrated in Anaheim Sunday late afternoon and into the evening as the Ducks continue to honor their thirtieth anniversary of being born as an NHL team in 1993. Everyone who got to the arena early enough was given a Paul Kariya bobble head to commemorate the occasion.
The press went after Todd McLellan concerning Pheonix Copley’s play on Thursday night. His response was to say that the team has full confidence in the netminder, citing the fact that he hadn’t played all that much up to that point. McLellan came back Saturday night with Cam Talbot…
A couple of nights ago, with the Ducks trying to extend their six-game winning streak against Pittsburgh (they didn’t), IH made a promise and issued a warning. The promise was that we would fill you in on what was making the Ducks so good. The warning was that this might be a blip, and so nobody should get all that charged up about an early season bunch of wins.
There’s not one thing that you can pick out that accounts for the LA Kings’ success thus far. It’s not superstar scoring. It’s not a goalie standing on his head. It’s not a rock-solid defense. It’s all of those things, which is why Coach McLellan cited a single word in his comments about his team in advance of their game with Pittsburgh on Thursday night: “Depth.”
There’s a big difference between “Nothing to see here” and “Did you see that?”, as proved by the Anaheim Ducks over the past few weeks. The team has emerged as a real player despite the feeling of practically everyone in hockey that they would be mired in rebuild-tis for the year.
Halifax, NS—Let’s get two things straight from the outset: They are called the Halifax Mooseheads, plural, and they are not a Quebec team, despite being a competitor in the QMJHL (Quebec Major Junior Hockey League). This is one third of the Major Junior trio of leagues which includes also the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) and Western Hockey League (WHL).
After getting beat in every area of the game to start their season against Colorado on Wednesday night, the LA Kings could be said to be expecting their “real” home opener on Saturday night with Carolina in town. They were looking to rectify their poor opening effort.
It’s all theory until they actually play the games. So it is that the LA Kings have to go out and prove that they are a better team than they were last year, when a third-place finish in the Pacific gave way to a one-round playoff exit versus the Edmonton Oilers in six games.
