The Manchester Monarchs beat the Worcester Sharks 5-0 tonight to take a 2-1 series lead in the second-round AHL playoff series. Jonathan Bernier stopped 26 shots for the shutout. The Monarchs got two goals from Trevor Lewis and one goal each from Gabe Gauthier, David Meckler and Corey Elkins. Oscar Moller had two assists. The [...]

Here’s the eighth set of questions and answers. I’ll go through the ensuing posts and try to answer as many more questions as I can. Check back a bit later for an update on the Manchester Monarchs, who are leading Game 3 of their playoff series right now…

Lots of questions, but it’s fun… Here’s the seventh set of questions and answers…

Continuing with the open forum, here’s the sixth set of questions and answers…

I promised I wouldn’t forget about the open forum questions, so here’s the fifth set of questions and answers…

The Stanley Cup playoffs move to the second round tonight, with San Jose hosting Detroit in the first round. It’s fair to say that, at least in the Western Conference, expectations were met. At the start of the season, if we had to guess a “final four” from the West, I would have picked San [...]

Kings defensemen Matt Greene and Jack Johnson will represent the United States at the IIHF World Championships, which will be held May 7-23 in Germany, the Kings announced today. Greene played in the 2007 and 2008 World Championships, plus the 2003 World Junior Championships. Johnson won a silver medal with Team USA in this year’s [...]

Ryan Smyth arrived in Los Angeles via trade last July, from Colorado in exchange for Kyle Quincey, Tom Preissing and a fifth-round pick, but as much as anyone, Smyth chose to be with the Kings. He waived his no-movement clause to accept the trade, despite being 33 years old and having his family settled in [...]

Following up on yesterday’s post about rising expectations, the logical follow-up question, then, is, “How do the Kings improve?” Is it simply a matter of the young players getting more experience and improving their games, or will there need to be talent brought in from outside the organization? Almost certainly, there will, but Terry Murray [...]

The Kings started two days’ worth of exit meetings today, and for at least one player, the meeting is bound to go better than it did last year.  A year ago, Brad Richardson wasn’t shy about telling Terry Murray, in his exit interview, that he felt he wasn’t being used properly and that he thought [...]

The Manchester Monarchs beat the Worcester Sharks 3-2 in overtime tonight to even their best-of-seven second-round series at 1-1. Bud Holloway scored the winner, 4:29 into overtime, and has scored the winning goal in all five of the Monarchs’ playoff wins so far. Jonathan Bernier stopped 31 of 33 shots and the Monarchs also got [...]

The show must go on… First of all, Manchester is playing Worcester in Game 2 of their second-round AHL playoff series (the Monarchs lost Game 1), so I’ll give results after the game. On the NHL side, Montreal and Washington are playing Game 7 of their first-round series right now, after which the second-round series [...]

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Going into this season, the Kings had a clear, simple goal: make the playoffs. It was a young roster, one with a majority of players who had never been to the playoffs, and it was an organization that hadn’t been to the playoffs since 2002. Well, all of that is over now. A lot of [...]

It’s no stretch to say that the Kings’ best two players are 22-year-old Anze Kopitar and 20-year-old Drew Doughty. Kopitar is coming off a season in which he set career highs in goals (34), assists (47) and points (81) and led the Kings in all three categories. Doughty, in his second season, became a Norris [...]

If you didn’t catch this yesterday, Kings captain Dustin Brown has been named as a finalist for the NHL Foundation Player Award, given to a player “in recognition of his commitment and service to charities in his community.” The award will be given out at the NHL Awards on June 23 in Las Vegas, and [...]

I haven’t forgotten about the rest of the open forum questions, but I still have a lot of stuff left over from yesterday, so I’ll keep going with that… If you remember, a big part of the success of this year’s Kings was attributed to the fact that they came together for two weeks last [...]

If the Kings had held a third-period lead in either Game 4 or Game 6, they would be nearing the end of the third period of Game 7 against Vancouver right about now. Instead the Kings, who were 29-0-2 in the regular season when leading going into the third period, lost both games and the [...]

As mentioned the other day, the Kings will potentially have six unrestricted free agents on July 1: Alexander Frolov, Jeff Halpern, Raitis Ivanans, Randy Jones, Fredrik Modin and Sean O’Donnell. The most intriguing situation, by far, is that of Frolov, whose seven-season career with the Kings has been quite a journey. A first-round draft pick [...]