A Poor Outing: Blackhawks 4, Kings 1

The Kings just can't catch a break. Two empty netters from the Chicago Blackhawks in the last 1:10 of the game doesn't do anything for the Kings' confidence. The game was 2-0 for the longest time with goals from Patrick Sharp and Martin Havlat. The Hawks definitely had more defensive spark compared to the Kings, but it also helped in that the Kings took a total of 8 penalties, which included a 10-minute misconduct by Davis Drewiske. From the looks of the situation, Drew Doughty was taken down in front of the Kings bench and Drewiske was yapping away to draw the penalty.

The poorest stat from this game was that the Kings only had 15 shots in the entire game, which wasn't surprising at all considering the way the first and second period were panning out. They had 5 shots on net in each period, the Blackhawks ended with 32 shots, and I just wasn't impressed with anything in this game. Things finally picked up when Doughty scored on the PP at 16:54, but nothing else happened for my boys.

Good: Kings scoring on the power play.
Bad: Needing a power play in order to score.

The empty netters were soul deflating for me. With a little over a minute remaining, the Kings pull Jonathan Quick and Sharp inadvertently got his second goal of the game when he cleared the puck from his zone, which would have been whistled for an icing. The crappy part was that it actually hit the post of the Kings' net and bounced to the other post and went in. Heartbreak. To make it worse, less than a minute later Havlat got a breakaway on the still empty net and that was all she wrote. The Kings are toast at 70 points and the Blackhawks gained two more points to stay in fourth place in the standings.

In going back to the Evgeni Malkin hit on Wayne Simmonds, as predicted Malkin was not suspended. Instead he received a slap on the wrist and was fined. I just love how people are so caught up in whether the hit was legal or illegal. That's not the fucking point, you nut jobs. To reiterate, the point is that the brunt of the hit was on Simmonds' head. There's no arguing that. But whatever, everyone has a hard-on for Malkin and the fine was clearly just chump change for him. The Penguins played on NBC this morning and both they and the NHL are happy.

On that same note in the Edmonton Oilers game versus the Chicago Blackhawks on the same night (Friday, March 20), Ben Eager shoved some of his body weight into Oilers' Liam Reddox head. Reddox went down and Eager was suspended for 3 games. Thanks for keeping it consistent and fair, NHL.