Not Tonight

Overheard on the elevator on the way to the dressing rooms after the Kings beat the Edmonton Oilers 5-1 Thursday night at Staples Center: “I knew they were sleepy on the second shift.” This from a hockey insid...

Oh So Sloppy

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. That seemed to be the mantra of the night at the Ducks home arena on Sunday night with Edmonton in town. One indication—the number of penalties taken by both teams. The Ducks had four...

Very Frustrated

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 t...

Tell Your Teammates

You want to make the playoffs, right, Anaheim Ducks? I mean really, really wanna with all your heart? Well you don’t let a weaker team come into our building and score with thirteen seconds gone in the first...

Confessing to the Crime

It was a sad night in SoCal Saturday. Sad, and a little bit pathetic. The two NHL teams, like Casey at the bat, struck out. For no good reason, because each of them was playing a team either below them or signi...

Ducks Slow Down McDavid

The Ducks beat the Oilers in Anaheim on Friday night, and all anyone could do after the game was talk about Connor McDavid. Could this be because on the first series of plays in the game he grabbed a puck an...

Oilers Inconsistent–Again

It looked to be a boring game with few shots and an easy win for the home team in Los Angeles Wednesday night. The Kings opened a lead with just over a minute gone. Here’s the situation: right off a faceoff, th...

Window Wedged Open

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 t...

Comeback on Katella

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...

We Have Adversity Now

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...