Frozen Fury Is Where It's At!

I have left the blog for a few days to head to Las Vegas for the 12th annual Los Angeles Kings Frozen Fury being held in MGM Grand! I've already mentioned this a few times, but I'm just reiterating the happenings around the west coast not involving the Phoenix Coyotes (a.k.a. Wayne Gretzky). Once again, the Kings will be facing the Colorado Avalanche who toiled at the bottom of the standings last season. They now have Kyle Quincey and we have Ryan Smyth; quite a cosmetic change (if you know what I mean).

Rich Hammond has posted the lineup for the game:

Smyth-Kopitar-Williams
Purcell-Stoll-Brown
Frolov-Handzus-Simmonds
Clune-Lewis-Westgarth

Martinez-Doughty
Johnson-Scuderi
Drewiske-Greene

Quick
Bernier

Bottom line: I'm excited

Alec Martinez will take the place of Sean O'Donnell as a pair with Drew Doughty. OD's suspension doesn't mark anywhere close to the end of the world; it will just give some ice time to some of the younger blood of the roster. I'm actually a bit surprised Thomas Hickey won't be making an appearance at Frozen Fury. I think that would add to the huge draw of this young team; continue to promote the excitement of the new season.

I will have a complete recap after the weekend is over, but I will be Twittering throughout the weekend with pictures and updates from Vegas! So please check out my Twitter, as well as KingsCast, the LA Kings, and the Kings trainer.

Also Hockeywood LA is something else you should watch out for as well.

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Kings Schedule In Depth

When the Kings schedule was released last year, I spent numerous labor-intensive hours examining and breaking down the schedule. Two days ago the Kings released the 09-10 schedule with a very comprehensive breakdown virtually eliminating any work for me; thanks guys! This season starts out with more promise than a year ago, so I feel I'm looking at the schedule with a different mindset. There are teams that the Kings could easily dominate who weren't so easy to play against last year (Minnesota and possibly San Jose). San Jose had been making zero waves this summer, so I'm not exactly sure with my assessment; all I know is the Kings are stronger now so it'll be interesting to watch.

The following is a quick scan on my part after perusing the schedule:

Oct. Sat. 3 vs. Phoenix (home opener): Talk about the most boring way to begin the season...
Oct. Tues. 6 vs. San Jose: ...Go Rob Blake...
Oct. Sat. 10 @ St. Louis: Start of the longest road trip over 11 days
Oct. Mon. 12 @ Islanders: Will Matt Moulson play??
Oct. Mon. 26 Toronto @ Anaheim: Going to the Pond for this one... will need a women-sized Leafs jersey. Wouldn't that be hysterical if I got Burke on the back of it? Hated him in Anaheim, but like him in Toronto.

Nov. Thurs. 5 vs. Pittsburgh: Sidney Crosby at Staples!
Nov. Mon. 9 @ Chicago: Start of possibly the worst 5-game road trip. CHI, CAR, ATL, TBL, FLA. Zzz..zzzzz....ZZzzZzzzz....
Nov. Wed. 18 @ Philadelphia: Pronger still in orange, yikes.
Nov. Wed. 25 @ Edmonton: Battle versus Moose!

Dec. Thurs. 10 vs. Phoenix: Can't think of a more boring two-game home-stand.
Dec. Sat. 12 vs. Dallas: ...zzz...ZZZzzzzZZzz....

Jan. Sat. 2 vs. Washington: Do you think Ovechkin will try to take a run at Dustin Brown again? Ow, my ear!
Jan. Thurs. 21 vs. Buffalo: End of the longest home-stand at seven games.

Feb. Sat. 13 vs. Colorado: First game against Kyle Quincey! How many tears will Ryan Smyth shed?
Feb. Sun. 14 - Mar. Mon. 1: Olympic Break. Can't say either way if I'm excited yet. I probably will be, but I'll just be hoping the Kings are still in the hunt at this point.

Mar. Sat. 6 vs. Montreal: Kings against the smallest line in the NHL, which includes Michael Cammalleri, bahaha.

Apr. Sat. 10 vs. Edmonton: Last home game of the season; not a bad way to end except if both teams need that last few points to get into the 8-seed.
Apr. Sun 11 @ Colorado: Kings end regular season with a back-to-back, hrm.

Any games that stand out to you? Let me know if I missed something of interest...

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Asshole Coming Through

Well, Lombardi finally made a splash tonight after a very quiet Free Agency opening day with many GMs out of their minds signing players to ridiculous contracts. The wait was killer as a Kings fan and finally Darren Dreger (resident favorite of A Queen Among Kings) broke the story via Twitter just a few minutes ago that the Kings had traded for Aves' Ryan Smyth.

Reaction #1: Omg, we got an asshole in the lineup.

Reaction #2: Who in Zeus' jizz did the Kings give up to get Smyth?

Reaction #3: (After reading the trade results) Hahaha!

In the end the Kings gave up a 5th round pick in 2010, D Kyle Quincey, and D Tom Preissing. First off, the 5th round pick is chump change. Secondly, I cannot believe someone took Preissing from us!!

Lombardi, you are awesome.

But, sadly Quincey will be leaving the sunny coast of Los Angeles for the snowbanks of Denver. This is the only part I'm a bit sad about, but we didn't really need him after the signing of Rob Scuderi (Go Deano!) to a 4-year, $13.6 million contract yesterday. Smyth has 3 years remaining on his 5-year contract in Colorado with the cap hit at $6.25 mil. He will make $6.5 mil this season, $5.5 next, and $4.5 in 2011-2012. Quincey was definitely the big piece in this trade and I'm glad that was all the Kings had to give up.

The pieces are falling into place... and jesus christ, Ryan Smyth is a King...

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C'mon Really?: Ducks 3, Kings 1

This Freeway Faceoff BS has got to go. I'm sick of the Ducks. Period. It seems like every game starts out and the Kings are playing at the same level as the Ducks, but as the game nears its ending, the Kings just can't finish it out. The Ducks score the go-ahead goal halfway through the third period and the Kings spend the rest of the game trying to generate the necessary offense. But the unfortunate thing is that the offense has been struggling as of late; so where's the scoring gonna come from?

Good question.

I have no idea. Dustin Brown has stalled a bit; Anze Kopitar is a little dry in that department. Alexander Frolov is the Kings leading scorer and he's on the checking line! What do they have to do here? Once again, I have no idea. The only area the Kings really dominated was in the faceoff circle going 59%. Kopi did well by winning 13 of 19. But the more important stat of SHOTS ON is not happening. Only 18? I'm not sure what else to say; the game was a bit on the boring side with lots of free-flowing movement and without too many whistles.

This was Erik Ersberg's first game back in net after recovering from a slight groin injury. He looked like his old self, which is exactly what I was hoping for. He was setting himself solidly in front of pucks and moving well in the paint. At the same time, there were some rebounds that were getting away from him, but all-in-all, not too bad. The two goals against him were both on the PP and the defenders were looking a bit off around Ersberg. Since all three goals up to the game's end were on the PP, I was hoping the penalty that Brad Festerling took near the end of the game would help get the Kings energy levels back to normal and maybe they'd be able to tie the game up. Alas, the Ducks penalty killers were looking good and the Kings were going no where except back to their zone to retrieve the puck.

As a whole, I am unimpressed with this showing by the Kings and I hope Thursday's game where the Ducks are the visiting team proves to be better. Perhaps two points to help move the Kings up the standings, maybe?

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Is This Really Happening?: Kings 3, Stars 2

Four wins in a row? I'm still watching the Kings right? According to ESPN, the last time the Kings have had this long of a winning streak was back in October of 2007. A bit lame, but, hey, I'll take it. We're on one now and that's all that matters. This game was much easier won than Tuesday's game where the Stars hung on for the shootout. Everyone has been looking really good... wait, that's a lie. ALMOST everyone has been looking good.

Good: Erik Ersberg, Drew Doughty, Dustin Brown. Doughty lead the team with 27:05 of TOI with the average shift lasting a minute long. Impressed? I think so! I absolutely cannot wait for Jack Johnson to get back to the lineup. I can't imagine what it's going to look like with another huge body back there. Ersberg notched another win on his fourth straight start. I trust and respect Terry Murray's decision not to name the Swede the number one until he's comfortable with his conststancy. I can see exactly his reasoning and won't be terribly disappointed if he waits a long time to make it official.

Not good: Denis Gauthier. I don't mean to make him my goat, but he makes egregious errors and it needs to be pointed out. He only had 11:48 of TOI in the game, which let's me know Terry Murray is seeing what everyone else is seeing.

(Matt Slocum/Getty Images)

Weeeee!!

The Kings won 65% of the faceoffs with Jarret Stoll winning 11 and losing just 4 giving him a 74 percentage!! I am very impressed. I basically have no complaints with this game. The Kings came out and worked hard at the start all the way to the finish. Well, I'll point out that the Kings scored only two (2) times on nine (9) PP opportunities. They're getting there; I'm not complaining. Just pointing it out. They ended with 29 shots on and limited the Stars to 26. I'd have liked the Kings to have at least 32 shots on, but I guess it doesn't really matter since they won. Go Kings!

A little bit of Maple

• The Toronto Maple Leafs went against the Edmonton Oilers where the former won 5-2. I could write plenty, but I'm a bit tired and wanna go to bed soon.
• I had my doubts about Nik Antropov. I still do; I really think he could be more of an intimidating player. He's just so large and not so nimble, but a little birdy told me to just watch and wait. I can definitely eat some humble pie tonight because Antropov's goal was pretty freaking sweet. Very cleanly put into the net and got the Leafs up further on the scoreboard.
• Will Jason Blake need to be a healthy scratch to get it in his head that passing is a good thing? He had two great passes tonight, which lead to two goals. Simple, right? I really don't think it should come to him getting benched for him to realize just exactly what Ron Wilson wants.
  
• In looking at the stats sheet, I was very surprised that none of the Leafs forwards had over 20 minutes of TOI. There are usually one or two Kings that get over that mark, but I guess that doesn't have to apply for all teams. This really isn't an astute observation or anything; it's just something I noticed.
• Congrats to Sam Gagner for getting his first goal of the season!

Bed time!

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Kings Shutout St. Louis Blues 4-0

The Kings traveled to St. Louis to play the Blues and I had a few concerns going into this game: (1) Matt Moulson was benched for Kyle Calder, (2) Tom Preissing was benched for Peter Harrold, (3) the Blues have the #1 power play in the league and the Kings have the #1 penalty kill. It's definitely strange to think of these two teams doing this well on the specialtly teams, but that was the case and I was really nervous because I didn't want the Kings to end this game not 100% on the PK. But if they had to be scored on, I would have accepted it coming from the team with the top PP in the league. If you're gonna take it from someone, might as well be the best.

Overall this game was pretty great for the Kings. Not only did they dominate on the scoreboard, they took over on the ice for all three periods. To cap off the they game, they get their first shutout of the season! Well, that was a small fib; they didn't completely dominate all three periods. The start of the game saw the Kings take a bit of time to figure out how to play in the neutral zone. This wasn't a new occurrence since we've seen this in their other games this season. They're able to get the puck out of their zone, but get immediately shutdown by the offense of the other team once they get into the neutral zone. One they figure out how to start a game with this problem already figured out, they'll automatically come out with more confidence.

(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Look at him go!

This game saw everything but the Blues scoring. There were plenty of fights and penalties on both sides. The bout between Sean O'Donnell and Cam Janssen was cringe-worthy since Janssen gave O'Donnell about 73 left jabs to the head. Eeee. Interestingly enough, Wayne Simmonds, Matt Greene, and Brad Richardson got the other fights of the evening with Raitis Ivanans only being called for roughing in one of the scrums. At the end of the evening, the Kings are still perfect on the PK and have killed off 27 of 27 penalties. Now that there is only one other team in the league who is 100% on the PK (Minnesota Wild), I get incresingly nervous with each penalty the Kings have to kill. I like the big, round number of 100%. Other things that are big and round that I like: a fresh Noah's bagel, those jumbo novelty tennis balls that you get players to sign, Kevin Smith, etc.

Kyle Quincey opened up the scoring with a lob from the blueline, which was his first while wearing the Purple and Black (or in this case, purple and white). As great as that was to get on the board, Patrick O'Sullivan's corralling of the puck and sending it past Manny Legace was exactly what I expect from him. He's getting his work done and making a difference every time he's out on the ice. But Mr. No Personality still surprises me with his lack of outward emotion when someone takes a run at him. He just blankly looks around. Do you not have feelings Sully? Anyway, the Blues then debut Ben Bishop who is a whopping 6'7" since Legace injured himself stepping out onto the ice for the start of the game. He was a giant in the net and making anyone under 6 feet tall look like a little kid. He was doing well until Jarret Stoll got a Dustin Brown rebound and wristed it to the back of the net. Easy stuff.

(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

They love each other lots and lots

Once again, I gotta give props to the checking line. They're looking good out there for almost every single shift. I can't say enough good things about them, bla, bla, bla, boring, boring, snore. Speaking of props, I will grudgingly give a nod to Calder. He was out there doing what he was supposed to be doing, being scrappy and helping to create some room for Brownie and Anze Kopitar. I will also say that Harrold was not horrible either. He wasn't fantastic or anything, but he wasn't tripping over the blueline, which I predicted he would do a few times. He blended in pretty well with the other guys on D, but I'd like Tommy P out there tomorrow. Wait... did he and Moulson travel with the team out on this quick road trip or not? Bah.

So this puts the Kings at 3-3-0, which I'm very happy about. I just hope they can continue this into Nashville. We all know what happened last season. I still have nightmares. But this game ends with another great stat. The Kings had 29 shots on net while the Blues only had 15. Not only are the Kings still on top with their PK, they're doing well getting pucks to the net! So good job, Kings, and congrats to Jason LaBarbera on the win and shutout!

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