August 31: Monday afternoon links

Good morning afternoon, Insiders. Hockey in late August: It’s kind of like watching paint dry. Speaking of which…

There is daylight at the end of the long, dark tunnel of the NHL offseason, Insiders. There’s not exactly a surplus of news to share, but there have been some interesting columns over the previous week.

-Are you ready for some speculation? The Hockey News picked up on a brief Milan Lucic story towards the bottom of Fluto Shinzawa’s Sunday Hockey Notes (from two Sundays ago) and noted that “unless the Kings shed salary elsewhere” that it’s going to be difficult to keep Lucic for more than one season and “potentially expendable at season’s end” should the Kings be “out of playoff contention by February.”

Here were the teams that were for all intents and purposes out of playoff contention this past February: Edmonton, Arizona, Buffalo, Toronto and Carolina. Call me crazy, but I don’t see a team with Drew Doughty, Jonathan Quick, Anze Kopitar, Jeff Carter and Milan Lucic amongst the February asset-shedders of the league. But, the crux of the article: At this point it doesn’t appear as though it’s going to be easy to keep Lucic. You already knew that. Moving on.

-The NHL is at a crossroads, as Scott Burnside writes in this ESPN.com story, as the league may ultimately have to invoke supplemental discipline to Slava Voynov while considering during the twilight of a tumultuous summer how to handle Patrick Kane’s sexual assault investigation. Burnside’s column is a halting call to attention of “how little we really know about the people we watch play the game of hockey”

LA Times columnist Helene Elliott wrote that “It’s impossible to imagine the Dodgers without Vin Scully” – so said the headline – in a story that quoted Scully’s citation of Dylan Thomas in the lede.

Vin Scully claimed to be “the most ordinary man you’ve ever met” and insisted he knows little about poetry, but anyone who has heard him during his 66 seasons as a Dodgers broadcaster knows he’s an extraordinary person and a poet, a storyteller, at heart.

It was while discussing his decision to return next season — likely his finale, which he has said before but not with as much apparent certainty as he did Saturday — that Scully cited Welsh poet Dylan Thomas to explain his approach to the end of his remarkable professional journey.

“He wrote, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ And I guess in a way that’s what I’m doing. I’m raging against the dying of my career, which has to be around the corner now,” said Scully, who will be 88 on Nov. 29. “But at least for the God-given time that I have left I’ll be raging. Because I’ve never minded getting older. In fact, when you get to where I am, you’re very grateful that you’ve gotten to be that old. But I never wanted to be old. Ever.”

How privileged we’ve been to have grown up (many of us, at least) listening to the voices of Bob Miller, Chick Hearn, and Vin.

-It was Anze Kopitar week at JFTC. What Can We Expect in 2015-16? | His Career, By the Numbers | Anze Kopitar’s Impact on Slovenian Hockey | The Greatness of #11, According to Everyone Else | Anze Kopitar’s 11 Best Moments in a Kings Uniform

-“Which Christian Ehrhoff will the Kings get?” asks Phil Loos, whose advanced metrics-reliant evaluations have been on point this summer. The conclusion? He’ll be worth that $1.5-million, “barring a catastrophic injury or a further precipitous drop in production.”

More from around the internet tubes: Rocco Grimaldi, the Southern Californian who made his NHL debut when he played for Florida at Staples Center the evening after he played a morning game for the San Antonio Rampage (and has been taking part in the informal summer skates at TSC), spoke to Puck Daddy about his productive November 18. | Lisa Dillman spoke with a University of Manitoba law professor and University of New Hampshire sports law expert Michael McCann while writing about the controlled substance charge against Mike Richards. | From LAKings.com: Alex Kinkopf’s summer countdown story ends with Coach Chris, a look back at Chris Sutter guiding his dad’s All-Star team from the bench; Deborah Lew looks at the former players who have transitioned into the wine-making business; more information on the September 20 Pedal for Pucks event.

And, the finished product:

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