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• Los Angeles Kings suffer Cup ceremony hangover

  January 20, 2013

  The defending Stanley Cup champions faced quite a clean-up challenge after their season-opening loss.
  
  After the joyous celebration of their banner raising, the Kings staggered to a 5-2 loss to the visiting Chicago Blackhawks.
  
  Here are just some of the issues facing this team one game into the 48-game sprint:
  
  

  • With top center Anze Kopitar sidelined with a knee injury, LA had no power play. The Kings went 0-for-5 with the man advantage.
  • The Simon Gagne-Mike Richards-Dustin Brown line was a mess at even strength, running up a minus-9 tab.
  • The best LA forward line was the fourth grouping of to Kyle Clifford, Colin Fraser and Jordan Nolan. “It was really physical and they scored a couple of goals on the forecheck, which you hope they get rewarded,” coach Darryl Sutter told reporters. That’s great, but as the old hockey adage goes, “your best players have to be your best players.”
  • The Kings defense, minus the injured Willie Mitchell, did an unfortunate job screening goaltender Jonathan Quick. One Chicago goal caromed in off of Drew Doughty and another deflected off of Alec Martinez.
  • Then again, Quick could have played better in the nets. He allowed five goals in a game for just the second time in his career. “When it came down to it, to make the big save, to keep the team, the score close, I wasn't able to do it,” Quick told reporters.

  
  Perhaps a couple of hard practice days – combined wit Kopitar’s return – will get the Kings back on track.

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• Los Angeles Kings becoming royal disappointment

  March 10, 2012

  The big-budget Los Angeles Kings are threatening to miss the playoffs.
  
  How could this be? This team has tons of talent. It already made a coaching change, from nice guy Terry Murray to taskmaster Darryl Sutter.

  Jonathan Quick has been exceptional in goal. The addition of goal scorer Jeff Carter gave the team a second offensive line to support the Anze Kopitar line, with Justin Williams and Dustin Brown on the wings.
  
  And yet L.A. somehow lost at Columbus and then blew an opportunity to win at Detroit against the depleted Red Wings. The Kings allowed two goals in the final with two goals in the final 4:02 in their come-from-ahead loss.
  
  Center Mike Richards must play better. He made some epic mistakes at Motown.
  
  “We need our big centermen,” Sutter told reporters. “We talked again this morning. You need your centermen to be dominant players in the middle of the ice . . . Kopi and Mike and Jarret (Stoll), they’ve all got to be major contributors.”
  
  Defenseman Drew Doughty also must play better. He and Rob Scuderi also suffered breakdowns in their own end of the ice.
  
  Scuderi told Los Angeles Kings Insider that his team needs to sustain their late leads.
  
  “It’s something that we’ve been good at for a couple years now,” he said. “I think we had a game vs. Phoenix, earlier this year, and this one. Those are two games and, you look at it now and we gave up three points in those two games. We would like to have those right now.”
  
  The Kings visit Chicago next, facing a Blackhawks team that has won four of their last five games.

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• Los Angeles Kings Desperately Seeking Offense

  February 19, 2012

  The Los Angeles Kings absolutely, positively must trade for offensive help.
  
  They just fell to ninth place in the Western Conference by suffering consecutive shutout losses. First the Phoenix Coyotes got them, then the Calgary Flames blanked them.
  
  There appear to be no internal solutions to this season-long scoring drought. Goaltender Jonathan Quick has played brilliantly this season, but he has suffered 18 one-goal losses.
  
  Kings coach Darryl Sutter tried to wake up power forward Dustin Penner by rendering him a healthy scratch for three consecutive games, to no avail. Penner, earning $4.25 million on the last year of his contract, has just five goals and eight assists this season.
  
  “It's definitely frustrating. I think it's been frustrating all year for all the players in here,” Kings captain Dustin Brown told the Los Angeles Times. “The lack of scoring. Tonight we had some really good chances. (Miikka) Kiprusoff made that save on Penner in the first It was a world-class save.”
  
  Penner’s ineffectiveness, combined with injuries to Simon Gagne (post-concussion syndrome) and Jarret Stoll (lower body), prompted Sutter to flank No. 2 center Mike Richards with youngsters Dwight King and Jordan Nolan.
  
  King is a big lad, at 6-foot-3 and 227 pounds. He scored 24 goals at Manchester of the American Hockey League last season and had 11 in 50 games this season. In his first four games with the Kings this season he had a goal and an assist.
  
  Nolan is about the same size. He has just 14 goals in 115 AHL games, but 234 penalty minutes. He should be a fourth-liner in the NHL, not  a second-line player.
  
  It’s hard to imagine either player moving the bar much during trade talks between Los Angeles and Columbus concerning power forward Rick Nash. Goaltender Jonathan Bernier would be much higher on the Blue Jackets list, for instance.

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• Training Camps: Changing Places, Vol. 1

  September 18, 2011

  Is Jaromir Jagr finished? Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren sure hopes not.
  
  When Jagr returned from the KHL and put himself up for bidding, Holmgren placed a surprisingly large bet on him. This yesteryear NHL star opened camp on a line with winger James van Riemsdyk and center Claude Giroux.
  
  “I think if he can get anywhere between 45 and 65 points, that's a pretty productive year,” Holmgren told NHL.com. “Your better players are 75 to 85 points, and we're not seeing 100 point scorers anymore. Claude led us last year (with 76 points). Jaromir still skates well. He's never been the fastest guy, but he can keep up and has great hands and vision.”
  
  Jagr, 39, looked somewhat less than dynamic when last we saw him in the NHL. But he shrugs off the skepticism his signing generated.
  
  “There's a lot of people wondering if I can still play and that's fine with me,” he told reporters. "I'm not 21. I'm not trying to prove something with my words. I can promise you one thing . . . I'm going to give it my best shot to play on a high level. I'm 39 now, but I didn't come here just for one year to impress myself. I'm not saying I'm going to dominate or saying I'm going to play good, but I can promise you I'm going to do all the right things to play.”
  
  Here some other notable newcomers adjusting to their new teams:
  
  Mike Richards, C, Kings: He gives LA a second No. 1-caliber center, joining Anze Kopitar as one of the team’s cornerstones up front. Nobody would be surprised if he hooked up with oft-injured Simon Gagne, a speedy winger he flourished with in Philadelphia.
  
  Jeff Carter, C, Blue Jackets: Brad Richards might have been a better fit up the middle for Columbus, but this offensively challenged team welcomes another pure scorer. Carter has scored 181 career goals in 461 games. But he was none too happy about his trade to central Ohio and many experts wonder how well he will click with power forward Rick Nash.
  
  Dany Heatley, W, Wild: He brings a 100-point pedigree to a team starved for more goals. But he scored just 26 times with elite playmaker Joe Thornton last season. The Wild doesn’t have anybody like Jumbo Joe. And with power-play hammer Brett Burns off to San Jose, how dangerous will the Wild be with the extra man?
  
  Tomas Vokoun, GT, Capitals: He flirted with the Panthers all season but never signed an extension. Then the free agent marketplace proved cruel to him, forcing him to sign a one-year, $1.5 million deal with the Capitals. The good news: He could be the missing piece for a team with Stanley Cup aspirations.
  
  Ville Leino, C-W, Sabres: Where will Buffalo fit him in its deep offense? To start out, coach Lindy Ruff placed him a center between Tyler Ennis and Drew Stafford. “I think they are all good players. Both can score and make plays,” Leino told reporters. “Once we get clicking, we'll have a lot of fun. I felt good skating in the middle. For me, it's easier. It comes more natural.”
  
  Joe Corvo, D, Bruins: When healthy, he puts up numbers. He scored 78 points combined in his last two full seasons. “Over the years you learn how to calm down and you learn just how to repeat the things that you do,” Corvo told reporters. “And you'd be surprised that it takes less energy to do more, so . . . that's just something I try to do. I try to just relax and just keep things simple. As long as I tell myself to just slow down and try to do less, then things tend to work out.”
  
  Brian Campbell, D, Panthers: This elite puck-moving defenseman regressed in Chicago -- scoring 52, 38 and 27 points the last three seasons -- so the Blackhawks cheerfully offloaded him and his big contract on Florida. Florida GM Dale Tallon hopes he can regain his 50-point form while quarterbacking his power play.
  
  Christian Ehrhoff, D, Sabres: He scored less than half his points at even strength during his previous two seasons. The Canucks had an awesome power play. Will Ehrhoff make sure Buffalo has a great unit during the 10 years of his stunning contract?
  
  Thomas Kaberle, D, Hurricanes: He wasn’t the offensive juggernaut Boston hoped after arriving from Toronto, so the Bruins let him walk to Carolina as a free agent. Kaberle and venerable puck mover Joni Pitkanen will run the Hurricanes power play.

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• Can't Wait to See New-Look Flyers

  August 14, 2011

  Out of nowhere, the Flyers dropped the plunger on their team nucleus over the summer. Philly fans are still coming to terms with it all.
  
  Whenever scribes opined about the possibility of a big Philly trade before the NHL Draft, team management squashed that talk. And then this happened: They Flyers traded center Jeff Carter to the Blue Jackets and center Mike Richards to the Kings.
  
  In return, they received Jakub Voracek, Brayden Schenn, Wayne Simmonds and the multiple draft picks for reloading.
  
  The Flyers cleared the salary cap space needed to sign goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov to a nine-year, $51 million contract. And they dramatically altered their team chemistry that, by all accounts, needed some change.
  
  Schenn could become an offensive star in the NHL. That rangy Voracek is just scratching his potential. Simmonds will be a popular second- or third-line power forward for Philly.
  
  The Blue Jackets get a second proven scorer to help poor Rick Nash, although a playmaking center might have greater value to that team. The Kings get a gritty No. 2 center to support team cornerstone Anze Kopitar.
  
  And the already deep Western Conference got that much tougher for the Blues with the addition of these two stars.
  
  Here is what the experts shortly after the bombs dropped.
  
  Phil Sheridan, Philadelphia Inquirer: “After the Flyers were eliminated in the second round by the eventual Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins, there was talk about taking the ‘C’ off Richards’ sweater. That would have been a pretty clear sign that GM Paul Holmgren and coach Peter Laviolette wanted to change up the chemistry on this team. But this? Dealing both of the joined-at-the-hip, faces-of-the-franchise, signed-for-eternity forwards will utterly remake this hockey team.”
  
  Ken Campbell, The Hockey News: “My, how time flies when you’re underachieving. It wasn’t long ago that the rest of the NHL was looking enviously at the Philadelphia Flyers and their future prospects with young superstars Mike Richards and Jeff Carter in the lineup. That all changed in two fell swoops Thursday when Richards and Carter were dealt away in two separate transactions on the eve of the NHL draft. To say the Flyers executed an extreme makeover one year removed from the Stanley Cup final would be a gross understatement. They lifted the house from its foundation with these moves.”
  
  Mike Brophy, Rogers SportsNet: “All in all, the Flyers get younger and save money on the cap. Will they be as good a team? Well, considering they have been picked to win the Cup by many the past two years and have fallen short, can they be any worse? Assuming veteran defenseman Chris Pronger returns to health after back surgery, and Bryzgalov works out in net, there is no reason to think the Flyers cannot challenge for supremacy in the Eastern Conference."

  
  Greg Wyshynski, Yahoo! Sports: “One of the most dramatic transformations of a dressing room in recent NHL history. Or at least since the Flyers traded for Chris Pronger, which was another bombshell dropped at the NHL Draft. And why did they acquire Pronger? Because of the locker room issues caused by players like Carter and Richards. This is Pronger's team now, as you assume he'll get the captaincy that probably should have been his to begin with. This is now the team of Danny Briere and Claude Giroux.”
  
  Chris Stevenson, Ottawa Sun: “The Flyers aren't a better team now than they were with Richards and Carter. They are younger with Schenn, 19, and Voracek, 21, who likely won't be contributing on the NHL stage for some time and they'll get another good prospect with the eighth pick Friday night. But we have to wait to see what Holmgren does with the rest of his cap space. Only then will the dice stop tumbling.”
  
  Gare Joyce, ESPN.com: “Richards is a great two-way center. Can Schenn match it? That's a bit better than a maybe. True, it's a high bar to set for Schenn to be as good on faceoffs as Richards, who is among the league's best. But Schenn has a great motor -- he won't be outworked. He has a toughness and edge along the lines of his brother Luke, the hard-rock Toronto defenseman. Both of the Schenns have a high hockey IQ. Both are low-maintenance self-starters. When prospects are traded these days, it's usually because there's a perceived hole in their game. Not so with Schenn. There's nothing diminished about his terrific potential.”

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