Still feeling it

Any truth to this?????

Secret deal to be named later?

Watch for a trade between the Coyotes and Ducks by the February deadline.
The Ottawa Sun reported that Ducks GM Brian Burke made some secret deals behind the scenes of his placing G Ilya Bryzgalov on waivers before the Coyotes claimed him.

Here's how the Sun said the curious transaction shook down: In addition to sending D Brian Sutherby to the Ducks in exchange for a second-round pick, Capitals GM George McPhee agreed not to put in a claim for Bryzgalov. So now Coyotes GM Don Maloney, after claiming Bryzgalov, will send something more significant to the Ducks closer to the Feb. 27 trade deadline when Anaheim can spend more money.

Burke denied the rumor to the Los Angeles Times, however.

I just not sure what has happen to lubo, is it the people he is with? I do hope its a turning point for him and that he just plays his game and not worry about everything else

Rich,

Isn't this one of those moments that Deano sits down with Lubo and goes over what's going wrong? Didn't he do a similar thing with Avery and Frolov? do you see that happening?

It's about time SOMEBODY holds Visnovsky accountable.

I've never seen a player given so much slack for horrible play by the fans, media and management in my entire time as a Kings fan.

At least his play isn't as
pathetic as Blakes.

But cheer up guys, John Klemm has been recalled to rescue the team. He'll save the season for us.
Expect some big numbers to be put up by him. I'm sure San Jose, Dallas, Ducks, etc... are all shaking in their skates.

Aaron said:

It's about time SOMEBODY holds Visnovsky accountable.

I've never seen a player given so much slack for horrible play by the fans, media and management in my entire time as a Kings fan.

Not sure lucky at the end was kind of bad.

Rich,

I commented on your previous article about Lubomir Visnovsky.....

Last May, Lubo was quoted in a foreign paper as being highly critical of Marc Crawford. Do you think this could be negatively affecting his play? What can Kings Management do to calm the perceived troubled waters?

Lubo certainly looks like a shell of the player he was the past couple of seasons.

David...I talked to Visnovsky on the first day of training camp about that story. He said he didn't make those comments and didn't even speak to the person who wrote the story. He said he gave a TV interview in Slovakia and that quotes were taken from that, inaccurately. If anything, he was concerned that Crawford might have seen the story and would hold it against him.

It looks, to me, like a classic case of a guy ``playing not to make mistakes'' rather than playing the type of game that made him successful. He often looks tentative and unsure of himself, and that's not the player we've seen in the past.

I've never seen anything like this. Usually injuries can account for poor play, not here though.
When was the last time we saw him make an end to end rush and then get back on D just as quickly? The power play is also suffering because he's been tentative.
I think he's actually played worse than Blake. At Blake's age and with his mobility he can't be expected to cover for Lubo. When Lubo fell on Getzlaf's goal, Blake had no chance to get over and pick off Getzlaf.
I hope he turns it around really quick. Without him playing at his best, we have NO SHOT.

Rich,

Any sense from Lubo whether any of his difficulties are related to the fact that he's been playing a different side in order to accomodate Blake?

No...but I haven't specifically asked him. I will, because it's a good question.

MaxPoints,

Exactly what I was thinking. I would love to see Visnovsky skate with Jack Johnson more often. Blake and Modry often do PK's together, so why not give that a try?

I don't understand why in the hell we would bother accommodating the defender who isn't going to here next year and is less likely to score, rather than a guy like Visnovsky, who's labelled as one of our teams centrepices. It's really quite frustrating watching Visnovsky make room for Blake's ever present point shot.

Next year when Blake is gone this team had better do a good job of filling all the empty spots in our defence. We need to let Visnovsky have more free reign in the attack with at least one competant defenseman who can hit worth a damn.

Lubo is trying to haqrd to cover for Blake. I'd be going nuts out there if my D partner was just Parked in front of my own Crease the whole night. Sit Blake a game like they do with Nagy. Forget about the "C" it doesn't realy mean anything right now obviously.

Gord,

I noticed Lubo and Johnson were paired on the PP for the game against the Sharks. It looked pretty bad but I hoped that Crawford would give that pairing more time, but it was back to Blake/Lubo against the ducks.

I'm with you on the Blake/Lubo pairing concerns. I kinda understand Crawford's reasoning in that he believed that both were worthy of the top pairing and Blake is WAY too old to switch sides. That would have been fine in 1997 but Blake just isn't worth a top pairing at this point in his career. The end of the Blake/Visnovsky experiment can't come too soon as far as I'm concerned.

I'd like to see Lubo paired with a stay-at-home d-man. IMO, his best stretch of games last year was when he was paired with Aaron Miller.

I think the problem with Blake/Lubo has much less to do with who plays which side and much more to do with who leads the attack. I've said it here before, Lubo is a QB, Blake is a shooter. Unfortunately, Blake thinks he's supposed to lead this team, but he really needs to get out of the way. At his age he is NOT too old to switch sides, but he is too old to be logging first pair minutes.

Rich / Mike, you think any of this could be influenced by the extra weight of the "A" on Lubo's chest this season?

Lubo is the biggest disappointment to the Kings this season to date. Hands down.