I Was Happy For 12 Seconds

The Los Angeles Kings have played two games since Christmas and have zero points to show for it. They've lost to the Phoenix Coyotes (3-2) and Minnesota Wild (4-3); both were one-goal games and both were heart breakers. The Kings had a 6-on-3 to end the game against Phoenix with a flurry of pucks at Ilya Bryzgalov but the clock wound to 0:00 and my adrenaline died. The game last night against the Wild was played at a pace that I wish the Kings could maintain at all times. Alas, they were outmatched in the last few minutes of regulation as the Wild shut the door on them.

Drew Doughty showed up by attacking the offensive zone for a goal that the team desperately needed. The Kings have been taking one too many passes for their own good. (Scott Parse, when you're in the slot with the puck, take the goddamn shot!) So I say "thank you" to Doughty for getting his behind to the net and putting the Kings on the scoreboard. The goal by Parse to tie the game at 3 apiece was great, except for the fact that Eric Belanger slapped them in the face 12 seconds later. The Wild got their go-ahead goal and gained two more points.

(LAKings.com)

You can't deny the effort and drive is there for the Kings to get as far up the standing as possible. At the same time, they're meeting teams just as hungry as them, which makes for high-paced drama at every turn. They could have been floundering at the bottom of the standings like in the past few seasons, but they're fighting every game and I can't fault them there. I think they're doing as well as they can while trying to stem the injury floodgates at the same time.

How do I feel about Teddy Purcell being on the top line? I'd call it a work in progress. Having Justin Williams out of the lineup is bad, but losing him to a broken leg is worse than people realize. He was the solid player on the top line while Anze Kopitar was struggling to find his game after Ryan Smyth left the lineup. Now that Smyth is back and Williams is out, we'll all be sitting on our hands waiting for Terry Murray's next move. I'm not sure how this is all going to shake out, but check back in for more thoughts and opinions about this topic.

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Michal Handzus has been names to the Slovakian team for the Olympics. Awesome. I'm looking forward to whom from the Kings is named to Team Canada and the US team.

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Yay For Winning! Kings 3, Wild 1

The Kings once again proved that those clunker-type games are coming around less and less. I wasn't sure what to expect going into this game against the Minnesota Wild, but I knew it wasn't going to be a cake walk. Although.. how does one walk on cake? Walk in cake? No clue.

Once again Marian Gaborik was not in the lineup, and ever since the rumors started of him coming to LA, I couldn't care less. The longer he's out of their lineup, the less chance there is he's coming to LA, because, really, I don't want to pay him big money if he's going to be sitting on IR. What's the point? The one Wild that stood out to me was Mikko Koivu. He was a lot scrappier than I thought he was going to be, and did a good job clogging up the neutral zone when the Kings were on the attack.

The top defensive pairing of Drew Doughty and Kyle Quincey has been killing it, as per usual. I have no complaints with the defensive, but there are two things. (1) I think I'm not as angry with Peter Harrold getting so much ice time because I'm so focused on how poorly Denis Gauthier has been doing. (2) I'm still wondering why Tom Preissing has been benched for as long as he has when Gauts has been sucking balls on the defensive end! Yeah, Tommy P doesn't kill penalties, but Gauts sucks on the even strength. Pick your poison.

Teddy Purcell got about 2:40 more TOI than his first game up, which was virtually all during even strength play. Hopefully his time will go up when Terry Murray sees that he could play on the special teams up here, although I'm not sure where he'd go as of now since our special team units aren't doing poorly. And speaking of ice time, where is Oscar Moller's ice time going?? He played less than 10 minutes! Well Wayne Simmonds played almost 13 minutes, so that could be it. Although, you could easily find an extra five minutes if you just took John Zeiler out of the lineup completely...

(Noah Graham/AP)

Yup, no complaints

Once again the Kings outshoot their opponents (43-34) and three of the four goals were on the PP. I'm glad we won this game against the Wild because the San Jose Sharks are going to whip through town on Monday. I don't think I'm going to expect a win that day; I'll just go and be an observer. The only thing I hope for is that the Kings don't come out flat-footed because they really can't afford any of that on their end. It's obvious what the Sharks are going to do, so I just want a good fight out of my boys.

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