Two nights ago, it was all rainbows and puppies, as Dallas Eakins might have said. (If you’ve been following my coverage of the Anaheim team here at Inside Hockey, you get this.) The Ducks had won, in comeback fashion. They had seen a rookie play his first game and...
The LA Kings have been on a bit of a run of late. Coming into Friday night with Vegas in town, they had points in 13 of 17 games. They beat St. Louis at home on Wednesday night, and came into the game sitting fifth in the division, three points behind those same...
Arizona was in Anaheim Thursday night for the first of two games versus the Ducks. They didn’t have to do much to get the lead, because on two shots they had two goals, the second one going in at 7:07. Ryan Miller was in net, as he has been in three of the Ducks’...
The Blues should have been playing the Kings for the second of a two-game set Wednesday night, but for snow. Snow? LA? This sounds like a “dog ate my homework” excuse. Well, according to the local freebie paper in the LA-area city where I live, there was once snow ...
Dallas Eakins said after Friday’s terrible loss to San Jose that he doesn’t like to make personnel decisions directly following a game. He likes to sleep on it. He did that, and came back Saturday with a lineup that inserted David Backes, Troy Terry, and Danton Heinen...
A year on, the social aspects of covering hockey are a lot of what I miss due to the restrictions currently in place. Seeing the scouts, most of whom are former players, often men I idolized as a kid. Knowing the guys on the Anaheim Ducks Off-ice Officials crew,...
Do you remember when the Kings and Ducks renewing their rivalry meant something? This year, unfortunately, fans in the East, let alone Canada, seem neither to know much about what’s going on on the West coast, nor to care. Maybe that’s the fault of these teams....
The LA Kings hosted the St. Louis Blues on Friday night, and they were promptly disadvantaged by a David Perron power play goal, scored at 2:08 of period one. This after having had a six-game winning streak dashed by a three-game losing streak (with one OT point) that...
Anaheim’s best period thus far this year has been the second. That’s why it was barely OK that they gave up what had been a solid lead in shots and chances and a 1-0 score as period one ended versus the Blues on Monday night. The give-up came with 56.9 seconds...
John Gibson came in rested, having not played since Tuesday. This was Saturday, when the Ducks had Vegas in town for an evening contest. The Anaheim team took a 1-0 lead at about the ten-minute mark but lost it late in the first period. Nothing new there. The team...
For five minutes Saturday night, it looked like the Anaheim Ducks had found the answer. This happened with the end of period two versus Minnesota in view. Josh Mahura, playing his first game of the year, fired a shot that was credited as a goal to him, though later...
The Anaheim Ducks came into their Thursday game at home versus Minnesota having lost a game 3-2 after gaining a win in a 1-0 shutout. Their secret weapon—not so secret when the only reason the team wins is that he allows zero goals—John Gibson was back in net. And...
The LA Kings have allowed the first goal in ten of their 12 games this season. One of those was Tuesday night, when with less than two minutes gone, they were down to the San Jose Sharks in LA. They would end the period down by two.
Patrick Marleau tied Jaromir Jagr for games played, third overall, at 1733 on Saturday night. This happened when he took his first shift in the Ducks-San Jose game which kicked off at 7pm local time in an empty Honda Center. Other story lines? The Ducks were still...
It’s not often the Anaheim Ducks score four goals. It is rather familiar that they can come from an early deficit, because they so often start as if the game can begin without them. So when they do both of those things, they should win. Not when playing the San...
Lots of storylines existed around the Kings and Ducks, playing their first game against each other on Tuesday night in Los Angeles. The Kings had two Dmen out to injury. They also had a couple of guys sidelined by Covid protocol. The Kings had their purple and gold...
“Every minute of the game is important. It doesn’t matter if it’s the last minute, the middle minute, the first minute. They’re all critical,” said Ducks’ coach Dallas Eakins Saturday night. “There were a number of minutes when we were certainly not our best,” he ...
The Anaheim Ducks are not scoring goals. Sometimes, they win anyway, by the slimmest margin, 1-0. This has happened twice in nine games to start the season. But having played those nine coming into Saturday with St. Louis in town, they had just 14 tallies, against 17...
The Great One turns 60 today, January 26th, 2021. That means that an entire generation has passed since Wayne Gretzky last played an NHL game. His records, of course, stand and will probably stand forever, most of them.
This season is going to look like this: win one, lose one. All the talk of rivalries and series is going to come down to a lot of .500 hockey as teams split series with opponents, nullifying the supposed “four-point games”. Only minor proof is available thus far,...
Seven times prior to Thursday, Jonathan Quick had found himself playing in goal for the LA Kings on January 21st, his birthday. Four of those, he’d pulled off a win. Three times, he lost. As the Kings and Avalanche started out, it looked like he might go to 4-4. But...
You stand in goal and hold your team in the game. You look fantastic. Your team wins because of you. This happens twice in a row. The second time, you get a shutout and they win despite having provided the slimmest offensive output possible, 1-0. Your reward? You...
Like many teams, the LA Kings have some questions to answer as this season cranks up. Some have already hinted at being resolved. One of those is, “How will Andreas Athanasiou, late of Detroit and Edmonton, fit in? First two games, excellent. Third game, versus...
The plan for the Ducks this year was simple: consolidate their lineup by seeing which youngsters were ready for the NHL, and keep working the Dallas Eakins way of playing hockey, which started, actually, off the ice with the personal touch of getting to know each...
In the on-again, off-again world of Covid, the LA Kings got their third pairing defensemen back on Saturday night, along with their best back-up netminder. Interesting thing was, none of that mattered because the team is not relying on the backline for composure so...
Hope gave way to disappointment for both SoCal hockey teams on Thursday night. The Kings, playing at home, lost to Minnesota 4-3 in OT after leading the game 3-1. The Ducks dropped a 5-2 contest to Vegas in Nevada after rallying from an early deficit to tie their...
Hockey abruptly stopped in March, and for Kings and Ducks fans, it never got going again, because neither team completed in the playoffs, even with the addition of teams for a qualifying round. Thus SoCal fans have been focused on other things, or on not much of...
We know a lot more about the NHL’s 2019-20 season than we did a day ago after Gary Bettman made a return to play announcement Tuesday afternoon. The basics of the plan are these: twelve teams from each conference will make the show, judged by points percentage. The...
It was the game that was. And was again. February 11th, the St. Louis Blues visited Anaheim, but if you look up the Ducks/Blues stat sheets for that date, there will be nothing. Only there was something—a game that was suspended after 12:10 of play. Veteran...
The LA Kings had the chance to continue their spoiler ways as the Colorado Avalanche came into town on Monday night for a 7:30 pm start. The clue that the Kings are being taken seriously: Pavel Francouz was in the Colorado net. He’s the Avs’ “good” goalie, and he has...
