Eight games dropped in a row. That’s gotta change if the Ducks want to make the playoffs, and hosting Ottawa, the worst team in the league if standings points is your measurement, is a good way to start the transformation. One thing the Senators don’t have:...
Ken Hitchcock ripped his team in the most direct, least subtle post-game presser I’ve seen in my 600-plus game career covering the NHL after the Oilers lost 4-0 in LA on Saturday. In short, he began by saying that only one person even showed up for the game (Darnell...
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who noticed how poorly the Edmonton Oilers played in LA Saturday night on the way to a 4-0 loss. When their coach, Ken Hitchcock, was asked about his team after the game, he said, “The start? Come on. We had one player show up and...
Slowly, the tide in LA is turning. This is in part because the Kings have added some new players recently and forgotten to tell them to play a slow, boring, no-offense game. Whoever’s job that is: thanks for failing! Because Brendan Leipsic and Nikita Scherbak are...
The Ducks are doing alright despite setbacks that might have derailed some clubs. They have their best defenseman, Cam Fowler, out with facial fractures. Their big third-liner, Patrick Eaves, is out again, having come back for just a handful of games after missing...
Is this how it’s going to go in the slow march towards the milestones of the hockey season—Christmas, All-Star, 427 outdoor games, trade deadline, golf—for the LA Kings? They win a spectacular outing on Sunday night, with Jonathan Quick playing out of his head for a...
Like it or not, the game LA played against visiting Carolina on Sunday night IS Kings hockey. Low scoring. Intense. Featuring great goaltending. It's like it's the 1950s again. A spectacular save at the end of period one made for something to talk about at...
Sometimes, you just don’t get the bounce. Or you get the wrong one—a puck hits a skate, or a leg, and goes wide. That was the Ducks’ fate versus the Maple Leafs on Friday night in Anaheim. Rickard Rakell was one of those who didn’t get the right break. Ondrej Kase...
The Toronto Maple Leafs play all three California teams in four days, and they don’t even get to take a bus from LA to Anaheim to ease the road trip. They have to fly to San Jose in between playing the Kings and Ducks. Perhaps that’s why they decided to get out to a...
Goal scoring. That’s the answer. The short answer to the question that has been answered with more answers than answers have answers. They don’t score goals. Who’s they? How about we get to the question? The question, of course, is “Why can’t the Kings win any hockey...
Self-effacing as always, here’s what Cam Fowler of the Ducks said after his hat trick goal, the last one in OT, which snapped a seven-game winless streak for Anaheim: “[After the goal] I couldn’t see anything. I was getting bombarded. I was getting punched in the...
Two sweaters now hang in the rafters at Honda Center in Anaheim. One belongs to a beloved son who scored 457 goals with the team and leads them in most meaningful statistical categories. The other one belongs to a prodigal who has recently returned and who never quite...
After the Kings’ 5-1 loss to Buffalo on Saturday afternoon, they kept us out of the locker room for a long, long time. So much so that the PHWA chapter, of which I am glad to be a member, planned to let the league know that the Kings had violated league rules. When...
Twenty-five years ago, a movie that had been a really bad idea came to life in the form of a hockey team when the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim were born. On October 8th, 1993, they played their first game, and their first home game. It was versus the Detroit Red Wings. The...
LA defeated the visiting Red Wings Sunday night in a game which saw them start their former backup netminder, Jack Campbell. Former? Yup, Peter Budaj is now backing up. What’s missing? Quick. No, I don’t mean, be quick with your answer. I mean Quick’s missing, down...
The Kings came out to play Friday night. They almost never play on Fridays. They’ll be back at it on Sunday evening. That’s unusual, too. What wasn’t out of character was their performance. They could get two goals but not the third, and they lost to San Jose in OT....
California has been a tough go for teams from all parts of the country and Canada over the past several years. It’s a common question to teams who visit the Anaheim-LA-San Jose juggernaut whether they’re happy with a split, or even just to get two points. Sometimes,...
The Golden Knights-Kings series has been a goaltending battle for the ages, with each game being decided by one goal in an ascending range. The first, 1-0; the second, 2-1 (OT); the third, 3-2. As the fourth began, the Kings were facing elimination. You might thus...
In a series dominated by two goalies at the peak of their games, it only made sense that Marc-Andre Fleury and Jonathan Quick would do it once more Sunday night with their series returned to LA. Save for save, they matched each other, Quick helped by a goal that...
There wasn’t much to be said in advance of the Ducks-Sharks game on Saturday night except one thing: the Ducks better be better, or there might not be a game five late next week. This could be the end of hockey in Anaheim for the year. They had been terrible two...
Is anybody going to surprise anybody this playoff season? Looking at the matchups, it seems surprisingly easy to call most of the series. That Washington-Columbus one might be a bit sticky, and who knows what Vegas is really capable of, but otherwise, it’s fairly...
Playing for nothing. It’s not just the fate of the non-playoff team. It’s also what haunts the mind of the teams that have clinched but who could move up or down the standings pending the outcome of the last regular-season games. That’s the case for the LA Kings. They...
In the ongoing saga of who wants and who does not want to get into the NHL playoffs from the Western Conference, the Avs blew a point and squeaked a point on Sunday (Anaheim beat them in OT), then headed up the freeway to faceoff with the Kings. Freeway. Faceoff....
Neither team could afford to give up two points. Other teams fighting for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference didn’t want the game to be a three-point affair. That was the story at Honda Center on Sunday night as the Avalanche visited the Ducks at an...
If you were wondering where the Kings-Ducks rivalry went somewhere around 2012, and thought you saw it come back in 2014 when the Kings beat Anaheim in a come-from-behind seven-game win, you probably like this year a ton. The hatred is back. And it’s not just...
What do you think of the mutual opponent hypothesis? What’s that? The idea that if team A and team B each play team C, then whoever does better against team C would do better against the other, as well. If it’s anything to go by, the Anaheim Ducks are in a sweet spot...
It might seem odd to say this. Perhaps even cruel. But here’s the analysis of the Detroit-Ducks game Friday night: A bad team got a mediocre-but-still-hopeful team off its game by distracting them with taunts that led to fights and chippy play that led to penalties....
The Kings let the Red Wings hang around and hang around on Thursday night, playing as if they had all the points to spare in the playoff race. They don’t. The shots opened 6-0 for the Kings, but it took much of the first period to get there. They scored along the way,...
Standing in front of Jonathan Toews in the Chicago dressing room on Saturday in LA, what came to mind in the aftermath of their come from behind spanking of the Kings was this: What makes this team so bad this year? The thought was the result of knowing how they can...
The LA Kings flat blew it on Saturday afternoon with Chicago in town. Not only did they lose to a statistically weaker opponent, they did in in dramatic fashion. After period two, in which Los Angeles poured in three goals, two on egregious turnovers by Chicago, it...
