March 2011 Archives

The Kings won't have their leading scorer for this season's playoffs, no matter how long they're involved -- assuming they're involved at all.

Anze Kopitar is out "indefinitely" and will undergo corrective surgery on his high ankle sprain Wednesday, the team said. The best news is that a full recovery is expected.

That probably won't happen until next season, and the Kings need him now.

They have the luxury of a five-point cushion (and two games in hand) on ninth-place Calgary, and a six-point cushion on 10th-place Dallas (which has played one fewer game).

The Kings also have a tough schedule ahead after playing 15th-place Edmonton tomorrow at Rexall Place. After that, it's on to Vancouver (1st place in the Western Conference), at home against the Stars (10th), at San Jose (3rd), at home against Phoenix (4th) and a home-and-home series against Anaheim (7th) to finish the season.

They will play all of these games without their two leading scorers -- Kopitar and Justin Williams, who is expected to be out until mid-April with a separated shoulder. No players have been summoned from Manchester (where top-six forwards Andrei Loktionov and Marc-Andre Cliche are also nursing injuries) sending a clear message that the help on offense must come from within.

The Kings scored a pair of goals after Kopitar left Saturday's 4-1 win against the Colorado Avalanche. If there's any good news for the short term, it's that Kopitar's injury came in the middle of a game against the 14th-place team in the conference, and the 15th-place team is up next.

The Kings' top two scorers will not be healthy when the playoffs begin. That's the grim reality facing the Kings after Anze Kopitar broke his ankle in the second period of a 4-1 win over the Avalanche on Saturday.

Head coach Terry Murray said that Kopitar will miss "a minimum of six weeks," which certainly dampened the mood inside Staples Center.

Kopitar suffered the injury at 15:39 of the second period during a puck battle along the boards with Ryan O'Byrne (you can see the severity clearly at the 1:50 mark of this video):

The Kings are already without Justin Williams, who sustained a separated shoulder against the Calgary Flames earlier in the week. Now without Kopitar, "we have to find a way either way," captain Dustin Brown said. "You don't want have your best player go down but if that's the case, we need to fill the responsibility collectively and find a way because no other team is going to feel sorry for us."

"He's your top player, your top forward, so there's quite a hole that's going to be there with him out of the lineup for this length of time," Murray said. "I've dealt with this before with top guys being out with injuries and it's an opportunity for other players to step up, the character of the team needs to step up and everyone needs to start doing the right things. You've got to trust your structure and your system and give it the best opportunity you can as a group to finish games off and play the right way."

Kopitar could not finish his team-record 330th consecutive game after the injury. Willie Mitchell, Michal Handzus, Ryan Smyth and Trevor Lewis scored goals and Jonathan Quick stopped 20 of 21 shots against the rebuilding Avalanche.

The Kings are short on options at center. Everyone moved up a line after Kopitar's injury - Handzus between Dustin Penner and Oscar Moller; Lewis between Brown and Smyth. But top prospects Andrei Loktionov (season-ending shoulder surgery) and Brayden Schenn (playing in junior) are not options. Cory Elkins (18 goals, 24 assists, 42 points) and Justin Azevedo (17+30=47) are the top two centers currently playing for AHL affiliate Manchester, but it's unlikely that either player would be expected to fill a top-six role in the NHL today.

The Kings do not practice tomorrow and next play Tuesday in Edmonton.

The short version: Puck dropped, Oscar Moller debuted, Kyle Clifford returned, the penalty-kill streak ended, the power-play streak ended, Willie Mitchell scored, Ryane Clowe chirped, Patrick Marleau fooled Jonathan Quick, Dustin Brown answered, Antti Niemi exited, Marleau fooled the entire defense with 4.1 seconds left in regulation ... overtime, shootout, Dan Boyle scored, controversy ensued, Jarret Stoll scored, Quick save, Quick save, Quick save, Brown goal, Quick save, game.

Just another night in the NHL.

"I'm not disappointed and I'm not surprised that stuff like that happens," Terry Murray said after another gut-wrenching, 65-plus minutes of hockey. "I'm watching games in this league right now and it is incredible what's happening late in games, overtimes, shootouts."

My early story, which some of you will find in your newspaper tomorrow, has plenty of details on Moller's first NHL game in more than three months. "For the first game in a long time here, he was really good," said Murray, who went on to compliment Moller's composure and puck-moving skill on the power play.

Some of you will find my late story, which has plenty of game details -- in complete sentences, no less.

The Sharks were happy to get the point, which allowed them to match Detroit at 95 points (though the Wings have a game in hand). The Kings sit five points back with 90 points, three points behind second-place Phoenix and three points ahead of the final Western Conference playoff berth.

Some additional notes, courtesy of the Kings' PR staff:

It's that time of year when the junior hockey and NCAA regular seasons have concluded, and prospects around North America take the next step. For some in the Kings' system, that means playoffs; for others, it means a possible look at the AHL or ECHL levels.

Here's how they stand:

• Linden Vey led the WHL with 116 points (46-70=116)
• Tyler Toffoli led the OHL with 108 points (57-51=108)

Participating in the Canadian Hockey League playoffs:

WHL

• Brayden Schenn -Saskatoon Blades (1st Eastern Conference, 1st overall in WHL)
• Vey - Medicine Hat (3rd Eastern Conference)

OHL

• Robert Czarnik - Plymouth (6th Western Conference)
• Tyler Toffoli - Ottawa (2nd Eastern Conference)
• Maxim Kitsyn - Mississauga (1st Eastern Conference, Mississauga will also host the Memorial Cup)

QMJHL

• Nicolas Deslauriers - Gatineau (3rd West Division)
• Jean Francois Berube - Montreal (1st West Division)

Won't be in CHL playoffs:

• Jordan Weal - Regina (WHL)

Participating in the NCAA playoffs:

• Derek Forbort - University of North Dakota

Won't be in NCAA playoffs:

• Nic Dowd - St Cloud State
• Kevin Gravel - St Cloud State
• Garret Roe - St. Cloud State
• Joshua Turnbull - University of Wisconsin

What a difference the shootout can make.

Minus the extra point against the Calgary Flames tonight, the Kings' deficiencies are glaring: Another 0-for on the power play; another goal allowed on the shift after they score; another point lost in the standings.

With the extra point, the glass is half full. Jonathan Quick is masterful and makes one of his best saves of the season count; Jarret Stoll is the most clutch shootout man in the game; the penalty kill looks invincible, having killed 34 straight.

All of these things are true of course, except for the lost point, and such is life for Kings fans at the moment: You must take the good with the bad.

The Kings don't score much, but there might not be another goalie/blue line unit you'd rather have killing a 4-on-3 penalty in the final minute of overtime. There isn't another player you'd rather have with the puck on his stick in a shootout than Stoll, and there isn't another goalie you'd rather have in the shootout than Quick (though we can debate the merits of Johan Hedberg, whose .750 winning percentage is slightly better than Quick's .741 as the highest among active goalies with at least 10 shootout decisions).

What all that means for the playoffs -- which is where all of this has been pointing since Day 1 -- remains to be seen.

Some more notes and observations:

One day after blasting fans for booing the Kings off the ice after the second period of an eventual 4-0 loss to St. Louis, Kings head coach Terry Murray said he didn't know how to soften his position.

He tried anyway.

"I overreacted probably, in saying ... you don't want to drag (the fans) into the reason why, but I did," Murray said. "There's nothing I can do about it now. It's never the right thing to throw stuff at your fans. I know that. It was a night to forget."

The announced crowd of 18,118 at Staples Center didn't get a chance to welcome back the Kings squad that had just swept a four-game road trip for the first time in franchise history.

That team bore little resemblance to the one that played the Blues on Thursday.

Considering that the Kings got a well-earned day off practice upon returning home Wednesday, and were playing a struggling Blues squad that was all but mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, maybe a letdown wasn't completely out of the blue (pun intended).

But head coach Terry Murray wasn't ready for the crowd's reaction after the second period. The Kings were booed off the ice shortly after Jonathan Quick allowed a bad-angle goal by Matt D'Agostini with 6.9 seconds left before intermission.

"You know what the most disappointing, frustrating thing was? At the end of the second period we were booed off the ice by our fans," Murray said. "That is the most embarrassing thing I have ever been through. That's the worst I have ever been through in all the years I've been coaching. I've been behind the bench almost 3,000 hockey games in the NHL and booed off the ice by your own fans -- at the end of the second period after we've been through here, after this road trip, going 4-0 in hard places -- very disappointing."

Murray then left the lectern, the five-question postgame press conference only slightly exceeding the two-question low set on March 5.

The debate over whether or not the boos were warranted ought to generate some buzz in Hockeywood (comments welcome here), at least until the Kings' next game Saturday against the Ducks.

As with all of the 11 remaining games, that one will have big implications on the Western Conference standings, which currently see the Kings trailing the Phoenix Coyotes by two points for fourth place. The Kings have one game in hand already, and they'll have two in hand after Phoenix visits Vancouver tomorrow when the Kings get a day off.

Some more notes/observations that won't make tomorrow's editions:

Add Team Canada executive to Rob Blake's list of post-"retirement" duties.

On Thursday, the former Kings captain was named an assistant to general manager Dave Nonis for the Canadian entry in the IIHF World Championships, which will take place April 29-May 15 in Bratislava and Kosice, Slovakia.

Blake joined the NHL in January as an assistant to Colin Campbell, the league's vice president of hockey operations. On Tuesday, Blake was one of four former players named to a committee tasked with studying "all the possible ways of creating a safer environment for the players and ultimately bringing their findings to the Board of Governors for approval," according to NHL.com.

This will be the first management position for Blake, who captured an Olympic gold medal with Canada in 2002 and a World Championship gold medal in 1997. He was also named top defenseman at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games, where Canada finished fourth.

Blake, a King from 1990-2001 and from 2006-08, retired as a player in June of last year.

The Kings had never swept a four-game road trip before Tuesday, but managed to seal the deal against another Western Conference opponent in Nashville.

Jonathan Bernier made 30 saves on a night when the Predators outshot the Kings 32-18. Bernier improved to 4-1-0 against the Predators. He's never faced another team more often in his young career, and Terry Murray will keep calling his number against Nashville so long as this continues.

"He worked hard to find the puck," Murray said of Bernier. "He was really on top of the crease square, and absorbed a lot of those pucks. Strong game."

"I think it's just the type of team that gives me a lot of action, keeps me in the game," Bernier said, and that was certainly true Tuesday. The Kings made more mistakes than Nashville -- Murray couldn't be happy with his team's 17 giveaways -- but also took advantage of their opponents' miscues.

Anze Kopitar, Alec Martinez, Wayne Simmonds and Dustin Brown scored goals, the latter coming into an empty net with 1:02 left in the game.

Long Beach native Jonathon Blum scored the Preds' only goal, a long blast that deflected off a Kings player (it looked on TV like Jack Johnson) in front of the net and tied the game 1-1. It was the second goal of Blum's 12-game career.

Some notes and observations:

Anze Kopitar's second career hat trick paced the Kings to a needed win in Columbus.

Jonathan Bernier stopped 32 of 34 shots in a game that saw the Kings (38-25-5, 81 points) get outshot by the fading Blue Jackets (31-27-9) 34-22. He allowed only goals to Scottie Upshall and Derrick Brassard in a game the Kings never trailed.

Brassard's goal at 11:30 of the third period brought the Jackets within 3-2, before Justin Williams scored his 22nd goal of the season at 18:26 off a give-and-go with Dustin Penner. The line of Kopitar (three goals, plus-2), Williams (goal, two assists, plus-1) and Penner (assist, plus-1) combined for four goals, three assists and a plus-4 rating.

A few more notes:

In fairness to Jonathan Quick, he hasn't had many bad starts this season. Bad goals? Yes, but he usually recovers.

It just so happened Wednesday that his last bad start -- one of the worst of his career -- was against Wednesday's opponent, the Detroit Red Wings. There was some pressure on Quick to re-establish his lock on the No. 1 goalie position after a couple good starts by Jonathan Bernier, and he delivered with an outstanding 28-save effort.

Because of Quick, goals by Anze Kopitar and (officially) Dustin Brown were enough. Brown's goal, a deflection of an Alec Martinez point shot during a second-period power play, held up as the game-winner.

Kopitar snuck in on the backdoor to tie the game at 1 at 7:50 of the first period, batting in the rebound of a Dustin Penner shot.

Darren Helm got the Red Wings on the board with one of those bad goals in the first period; Quick got a piece of Helm's hard slapshot, but the puck trickled slowly behind him and over the goal line.

Credit the Kings' penalty kill for allowing only one shot to reach Quick in 2:43 of man-advantage time for Detroit, which had scored at least one power-play goal in seven straight games.

By the time the day's games were complete, the Kings needed a win to remain in the top eight of the Western Conference standings. They can't be knocked out of the top eight tomorrow, either; only a Phoenix win against Calgary could push them into eighth.

A few more notes:

The Kings let one slip away.

In a game they led for all but 89 seconds, the Kings watched the Dallas Stars leap two points ahead of them in the standings on Brenden Morrow's goal 38 seconds into overtime.

The blame was squarely pointed toward a power play that failed to convert four chances spanning 9:00 -- including a three-minute major penalty after Steve Ott was penalized for spearing late in the first period.

"We need to re-focus, re-adjust -- especially on the power play -- and I think maybe just relax a little bit," said Justin Williams, who had a goal and an assist. "We know we're struggling on the power play but we need to relax out there I think a little bit with the man advantage and in turn make plays because there are a lot of guys that are really good with the puck and we need to execute that."

Willie Mitchell and Kyle Clifford also scored goals for the Kings (36-25-5, 77 points), who got 18 saves from Jonathan Bernier. With the Kings up 3-2 at 5:20 of the third period, Bernier was burned for a short-handed goal by Jamie Benn, who stole the puck from Drew Doughty just inside the Kings blue line and skated the length of the ice before depositing the puck between Bernier's legs.

Mike Ribeiro and Trevor Daley also scored for Dallas (36-23-7, 79 points).

Underneath the adrenaline, the Kings' outrage over the game-winning goal, and the specter of a 2010 playoff rematch (and possible 2011 playoff preview) was a familiar truth: The Kings need to score more.

The good news is that Jonathan Quick (33 saves) was good. But he could do nothing about the Kings' inability to convert a power play or put more than 22 shots on goal.

The bad news is that, in the last two games combined, the Kings have scored twice and registered 40 shots. That might amount to a walk in the park for NHL-leading Vancouver, which had a surprise up its sleeve by matching the Kings' physical play for 60 minutes.

They also had this Daniel Sedin goal, which drew the outrage of Quick, Drew Doughty, and Terry Murray -- judge for yourself whether it's legal or not:

Tomorrow's story will focus on the unusally strong reaction by the Kings to Sedin's goal.

Here are a few notes that won't make the paper:

The difference in the Kings' last two games wasn't Jonathan Bernier or Dustin Penner. It was astronomical.

That said, Jonathan Bernier's 25 saves and Dustin Penner's debut were the most memorable aspects of a game decided on Jarret Stoll's power-play goal with 7:47 left in the third period.

For the first time in a while, Bernier had to flash a nervous smile and get political in the dressing room after the game. That's the reward for posting a shutout immediately after a 7-4 loss: Questions about whether you want to be the starter.

"For me, it's not something I focus on," Bernier said. "Me and Quickie, we're here to win some hockey games. Quickie's our number one. He's done a tremendous job for us."

Nobody's denying Quick's resume. But neither can one ignore his six goals allowed Monday against Detroit - a team the Kings might have to face in the playoffs. Terry Murray didn't ignore Quick's last outing by starting Bernier on Thursday, and now the coach can't just as easily ignore Bernier's shutout. Murray would not tip his thinking when asked after the game if he was inclined to start Bernier against Dallas.

Penner didn't score, but he was directly involved in the goal, and had some good cycle shifts with Anze Kopitar and Wayne Simmonds (and Justin Williams, who took over for Simmonds at right wing in the third period). Penner's only shot attempt was blocked, but he led the Kings with five hits.

A few more notes that won't appear in tomorrow's editions ...

Dustin Penner attracted more than the usual share of media and fans to Toyota Sports Center on a Wednesday morning. Penner is the Kings' new star attraction but, Terry Murray cautioned, "I'm not looking for him to be a savior of the franchise."

Given the revolving-door history of Kopitar's left wings, there will be pressure on Penner to perform - but not as much as he faced in Edmonton. That will be the focus of tomorrow's story, recapping what was an otherwise uneventful day of practice. Here were the new forward lines:

Penner-Kopitar-Simmonds
Smyth-Stoll-Williams
Richardson-Handzus-Brown
Clifford-Lewis-Westgarth-Ponikarovsky

Clifford goes to the fourth line by design; Murray said that he's cognizant of the fact that the rookie hasn't played more than 75 games in a season at the junior level. Clifford is at 59 now and Murray figures he will be more effective in energy-line minutes from here on out.

Jonathan Bernier will start in goal against the Phoenix Coyotes in light of Jonathan Quick's subpar performance against Detroit on Monday.

"It has just about everything to do with the last game," Murray said. "That's how I make my decision. I've got to see performance. I'll take a player out if he's not performing, or having a really difficult day."