Good morning, Vancouver

Good morning, Insiders, and good morning, super, natural British Columbia.

Ah, yes. The end-of-season Western Canada trip. Every full season since 2010-11, the Kings have traveled to play at least two teams from the Canucks/Oilers/Flames rodeo during either the final or penultimate week of the season. Last year, this trip did not end well for the team. Two years ago, the team was 1-1-1 but showed a good spark in coming back from a 3-0 deficit to Calgary to earn a point in a shootout loss in a game that featured a nifty Anze Kopitar goal. Ultimately, L.A. finished 11 points behind San Jose and 12 points up on fourth-place Phoenix, so there wasn’t a ton that could have been earned over the final week of the season. If you’d like more excerpts of semi-meaningful regular season games, you know where to find me.

It was a quiet, uneventful flight up the coast yesterday, and that’s fine. Please let every flight be “without event.” As we deplaned and handed our customs cards to the border services agents, we emerged to be greeted by… partly sunny skies? Warmth? On the Lower Mainland?

When it is sunny, the Pacific Northwest is among the greatest places on the planet, and this Portlandia clip is dead-on accurate. Living in Seattle, I learned that it rarely “rains heavily,” but rather “drizzles steadily.” Southern Californians have no concept of this. Constantly changing windshield wiper speeds gets tiresome. There is no such thing as “spring,” but rather a slightly warmer extension of the dreary, overcast weather that generally runs until July 4.

When we left dinner last night, it was raining lightly. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Kings are scheduled to skate at 11:30 a.m. this morning. There’s more to come from Rogers Arena, Insiders. Have a good Monday.

IMG_9152

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.