Year-In-Review – 15 – Brian Willsie

As we move along with the Reviews for the forwards, I'm not ignoring what has been going on for the past couple of days. I'm doing the exact opposite in fact; I can't stop thinking about what has occurred and it really just has been a sad and disappointing past couple of days for me. But celebrating among family and friends on the 4th had been a good getaway for me. That being said, we're going to move along with the reviews. I really hope that I can get all of these done before the summer is over actually.

To reiterate my first Review on the forwards, I'll be writing these alphabetically and in reverse order. So we move along to Brian Willsie.

I think out of all of the players on the roster, he's the one that did almost nothing on every shift. There's not one thing I can remember that he really contributed to the games he was playing in because, as with every fringe player, he was scratched for a good number of games. Hilariously enough, when I looked at the Kings website for Willsie's stats, he wasn't even on the list!


If you take a close look, even Lauri Tukonen was on this list by playing ONE GAME!!! HAHAH!!!! I guess the web programmer feels the same way about Willsie as I do. So, thank you, web programmer, for providing me with a good round of laughs. I had to venture over to Yahoo sports to check out what he posted for last season. So he played in 53 games and got 4 goals, 8 assists for 12 points, and ended at a -8. 53 games?? Really? I can't even remember how any of his goals looked. I'm really trying... but I got nothing...

The one thing that I CAN remember, and the one thing that I will always associate with Brian Willsie was that faithful day on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008. This was the game in which the Kings took the Ducks to the 6th round in the shootout near the end of the season. After the 1-1 game went into OT, I was already envisioning who I wanted to see out on the ice for the shootout. My top three were Dustin Brown, Anze Kopitar, and Patrick O'Sullivan. At that point in time, I was sick of seeing Michael Cammalleri in the top 3 with Sully having to come in the 4th round to win the game. Well, my wish had been granted, Sully was the 3rd shooter. But then Cammy was the 4th, and Alexander Frolov was the 5th. I had not expected the shootout to extend this far and had no clue who Crawford was going to send out onto the ice. IMAGINE MY SHOCK WHEN BRIAN WILLSIE HOPPED OVER THE BENCH. After 65 minutes of hockey, he had only played 5:54 spread over 8 shifts. He had absolutely no business being out on the ice at that point in time. Who would I have chosen next?

Lubomir Visnovsky.

Rob Blake.

Derek Armstrong.

Hell, Kevin Dallman.

Per Assistant GM, Ron Hextall, Willsie was in the top 3 shooters while with the Washington Capitals. Who knew! But how much is that weighed against how he was doing during the prior 65 minutes? According to Crawford's gut feeling, none. The only other fact about Willsie that I will remember is that he was Alexander Ovechkin's roommate when AO was a rookie.

I just tried to look at NHLSCAP.com to see what he was making last year on his 1-year contract signed last summer. Wouldn't you know it, he's not on this page either! He seems to be disappearing a la Nowhere Man style. Odd.

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Scoring By Committee

With the Kings in their second to last game of the season facing the Sharks, I thought this was going to be another game in this 82-game schedule that would have a predictable ending. The Sharks had been on an 18-0-2 tear through the league, but the Kings didn't let the Sharks utterly dominate the game. The Kings played disciplined hockey by not taking any penalties in the first 40 minutes and they were only short-handed for a short stint in the third frame when the Sharks scored a power play goal when Frolov took hooking penalty. I can't actually remember the last time I saw him in the box. (Sully actually took a 10-minute misconduct after a whistle and was out for the last 5 minutes of the game.)

This whole idea of scoring by committee comes into play with Brian Freaking Willsie getting his 3rd goal of the season with a rebound at the beginning of the second period. Ivanans gets his 6th goal of the season from an assist by Frolov and, awesomely enough, it looked almost like a carbon copy of the goal from Tuesday night. Frolov from the back of the net snipes a pass around the right side of Nabokov, Ivanans picks it up, and sends it to the back of the net. He actually gets 9 minutes of ice time without taking any penalties! Raitis, what's going on?! But the game wouldn't be complete without a goal and an empty-netter from the Kings resident-leading scorer Kopi (31, 32).

Highlights of the game:
- Ivanans doing a pre-game interview with the trademark scowl on his face the whole time.
- Cammy blowing a huge snot rocket on the bench.
- Ivanans getting his 6th goal.
- Post-game interview with Frolov.

Score: Kings 4, Sharks 2

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I AM SPEECHLESS

But wait, this is my own space to rant and so I shall. I have two things to gripe about; the first thing obviously being the Kings using Brian Willsie in the shootout as the 6th shooter, the second being having to listen to the worst sports fan sitting directly behind me for the entire game. So here we go:

1) Brian Willsie - played 5:54 in 8 total shifts. The ONLY thing he did was win ONE faceoff. We go into the 6th round of the shootout and who jumps over the bench, but a certain #21 who, like a batter, strode up to the plate thinking that he was gonna hit one out of the park. But honestly, kms and I knew that the game was over. He didn't even need to go for the shot. There was no need. The game was over when he stepped out onto the ice.

And someone please tell me when was the last time Lubo got a penalty?? Let alone a 10-minute misconduct! What??


2) So kms and I went to the Honda Center to watch this game. I had never been there before and this was kms' third visit. I was a little hesitant about going into enemy territory but Finny and Sleek assured me that Ducks fans were tame. I guess someone didn't give the lady sitting behind me that particular memo! She spent the first half of the first period complaining to her equally asinine friend of how poor her visit was to the Staples Center and how Kings fans were rude and classless. Oh, she also mentioned that they were just as bad as Raider fans. Hey lady, I don't know if you know this, but the Raiders left town a couple of years ago. Get your head out of the sand and live in the now.

She then spent the rest of the period complaining about how the Ducks were looking terrible and seemed lost without their top guys in the lineup. Cry me a fucking river, ho bag. Then in the second period she proceeded to yell to the Ducks to stop playing like the Kings and play like the Ducks. Hey lady, did you look at the scoreboard? The Kings are up 1 to nothing. And then she was saying how the Kings just slow everything down and how terrible they were. Hey! It's called controlling the game! Are you a moron or just plain stupid?

In the third she just got worse and worse. This was very reminiscent of a post I had read earlier this season by Mike Chen where he talked about a woman that sits near him at the Shark Tank uttering ridiculous comments. This woman was the same way, talking about whatever was going on in her worthless life and then yelling the stupidest things. I mean, does she even watch hockey on a regular basis? One thing she mentioned was that she didn't care about shots on goal or scoring chances because the only thing that matters is the score at the end of the game. Ok, GENIUS, if you think that way, then you should just check the scores on ESPN.com when the game's over. That's honestly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

She then decided to give her two cents on my goaltender, Erik Ersberg, and how he lets out the worst rebounds. Umm, first of all, why are you talking about my goaltender like that, and second, you obviously have NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE ERSBERG ABSORBS REBOUNDS LIKE A SPONGE. LIKE A FUCKING SPONGE.

And then we headed into the shootout. This part took the cake. Everyone in the arena was standing up and I was actually leaning forward a little bit because Finny and I were clutching each other during the shots. After every stop that Hiller made against the Kings, she would lean over and basically yell into my ear at how the Kings weren't in the playoffs. She would ALSO do the same thing when Ersberg would make a save. OKAY! I AM FULLY AWARE THE THAT KINGS ARE OUT OF THE PLAYOFFS. ONCE AGAIN, ARE YOU STUPID OR RETARDED?

This lady was complaining in the first period at how horrible Kings fans were and here she was in the shootout being insanely obnoxious and leaning over and screaming in my ear about how the Kings sucked and weren't in the playoffs. I WAS SOOOOOOOO CLOSE TO TURNING AROUND AND SOCKING HER IN THE FACE. I don't think you even know... When they were announcing the players of the games, she kept chanting "KINGS SUCK, KINGS SUCK, KINGS SUCK!" So I finally turned around and told her ass to shut up. I'm not sure if she heard me but we were leaving anyway.

I know she's not representative of all Ducks fans, but she ruined the whole experience for me. I will NEVER go to the Honda Center again. It's true when they say that one person can ruin everything, and this lady took the cake. She can go EFF HERSELF.

Finny and I were able to take some sound clips at the game, which we plan on splicing into the next episode of the I'm Not a Puck Bunny Podcast. It has not been posted yet, but please listen to Episode 7 when it is and not only will you hear me and finny, you will meet kms, Earl Sleek, and RudyKelly. You can also hear my periodic side comments of how the lady behind me needed to shut up.

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