Back on Top With Two Shootout Losses

In the third back-to-back of this young season, the Los Angeles Kings lost to the San Jose Sharks and Vancouver Canucks in shootouts and yet they find themselves back at the top of the Pacific Division. Odd, I know; but sometimes weird occurrences just happen. Even though the Kings were not the victors in either game, they were both great to watch. There were hit posts, rush plays, and surprise contributions all over the place. In any other year, these are two teams the Kings usually lose to, but this season is, once again, proving they are on a constant uptick.

(LAKings.com)

While viewing the game on Wednesday against the San Jose Sharks, I did not realize how much their roster had changed until I saw the lineup. Gone are Christian Ehrhoff and Jonathan Cheechoo; in are Dany Heatley and Manny Malhotra. The make up of their team seems to have remained the same but the difference in this equation is a better Kings roster. That being said, the Kings dominated the first period while the Sharks came back in the second, and the teams battled it out all the way to the shootout. My question here is, "Why was Alexander Frolov left out of the top three shooters?" He had the only Kings goal of the game and was grinding it out as much as the other players, so your guess is as good as mine. It also must be noted that he was left out of the top three shooters against the Canucks as well.

Jonathan Quick played both games and looked solid while Sharks' Evgeni Nabokov and Canucks' Andrew Raycroft looked just as steady. First off, who knew Raycroft could still play! He was hit with 31 shots while Quick had just 15 sail his way. Second, did the Kings not realize that Nabokov was going to stop every shootout shot that went directly towards his chest? I don't get the logic used by the players; subsequently, the Sharks left the arena with two points.

(LAKings.com)

This picture's purpose is solely to show how ridiculous/awesome Bailey is.

Points of interest:

• Scott Parse notched his first NHL goal of his career and has made quite the statement.
• Anze Kopitar is still among the league leaders in point production.
• Hockeywood, L.A. is growing nicely and every Kings fan should check it out!

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Back And Forth: Canucks 4, Kings 2

The Kings played the Vancouver Canucks again up in western Canada where the latter came out the victors in this weird game. All six goals came in pairs with the last four occurring in less than five total minutes. Unfortunately the Kings received zero points from the contest but they remain in 13th place with 67 points in the Western Conference.

Special thanks to FSN for not airing the game with Bob Miller and Jim Fox. Listening to the Vancouver commentators was really "awesome." And by "awesome" I mean "painful." It's a good thing I possess the power of filtering out noise. Something else I found (and still find) annoying was that Denis Gauthier had the puck in the defensive zone at one point and started to pass it out when he fell over. That's right, he. Just. Fell. Over. Unbelievable. By the way, do the Kings really need two players on the roster who are only gonna be playing 5 or 6 minutes a night? Raitis Ivanans played 5:38 and Kevin Westgarth played 4:31. Westgarth needs to learn how to skate better and have more offensive upside or else he's probably gonna be in Manchester for a long time. I'm not sure why he's with the Kings right now, but it's not like he's moving from the 4th line anytime soon.

This game might have had the lowest number of hits the Kings have ever had with 11; the Canucks ended with only 9 too. Quite odd and a bit boring too, but I guess it doesn't help when you're being outshot 20-3 in the first period. The Kings spent the entire first period running around trying to get control of the puck, and the second period wasn't any better but at least the Canucks only had 7 shots then. The Kings best period was the 3rd in terms of shots where they got 14 but they were only able to get two goals!

(AP/Jeff Vinnick)

The first goal was the one part I enjoyed about this game; Alexander Frolov absolutely schooled Mats Sundin to score on the backhand. Talk about slick. But the whole game was a bit odd with Vancouver scoring twice in the first and entering the third period with the same score and then having the next two goals belonged to the Kings with Anze Kopitar scoring immediately after Fro scored. With some hope building for the Kings, the Canucks shut it down with two quick ones from Henrik Sedin. Out of the four against Jonathan Quick, two of them were definitely fluky ones. One bounced weirdly behind the net against the boards and Quick was caught out of position; the other was Henrik Sedin killing some time by taking the puck toward Quick on his own. He ended up dipsy doodling in front of Sean O'Donnell and getting the shot off pretty easily.

The end of the game got a bit exciting with Alexander Burrows taking a penalty with just under two minutes to go; the Kings pulled Quick and it was 6-on-4 for the rest of the game. Unfortuately, it was a no-go for the Kings and the Canucks are sitting in the 5th seed. The Kings face the San Jose Sharks tonight where, if they win, they'll STILL be in 13th place. In looking at the standings, I can be happy about one thing: the Ducks are in 12th place. Haha.

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