Tuesday: The Kings call up Andrei Loktionov (yea!) and Brandon Segal (who?*) for their Western Canada road trip. Great expectations are had by all.
*Segal actually had a great week: he didn't score or anything, but he had a few good opportunities and threw his weight around nicely. I think he's locked up a spot for the foreseeable future.
Wednesday: Andrei Loktionov (no!) separates his shoulder and will miss 4 months. The Kings win in a lackluster effort for both them and the Oilers, 3-1. Goals are by Wayne Meat Train Simmonds (yea!), Matt Greene (wha?), and my main man Alexander Frolov.
Thursday: The Kings get handled by the Vancouver Canucks, 4-1. They have a few great opportunities but Roberto Luongo was excellent in net and holds the Kings to one lone goal, scored by Meat Train Simmonds (yea!!).
Friday: I go to the Ducks-Blackhawks game with Earl, his brother and a buddy of his. It was terrible: not only did the Ducks win, not only did Corey Perry extend his scoring streak, not only did the Blackhawks not score, but Kyle Calder (boo!) played well. Kyle Calder. Damn Earl for saying I was going, I think it was motivation. Also, it was funny that I went to the game with a bunch of Ducks fans and had to explain why they some times call off icing.
Saturday: The Kings play the Blackhawks and are fairly mediocre. They win the game on the back of Jonathan Quick, who followed up a solid week with a spectacular game against the Hawks. Quick stopped 22 of 23 against the Oilers, 30 of 33 against the Canucks, and 32 of 33 against the Blackhawks (he was also 2-for-2 in the shootout). Quick obviously read my criticism of his play and responded accordingly.
The Kings' lone goal in regulation was scored on a pretty play by Wayne Meat Train (yea!!!), who overall had 3 goals and an assist on the week. Simmonds, Dustin Brown (yea!) and Jack Johnson (eh) were the 3 stars for the week, while the traditional stars (Kopitar, Doughty, Williams) all took the week off. The Kings managed to gut through 3 pretty tough games to pick up 2 wins, but they can't score 5 goals in 3 games and expect to win 2 of them every week.
Overall, the Kings did what they needed to do: they played tough, defensive hockey and counterpunched when they needed to. This felt like a middle of the season episode, like that episode of Mad Men where they focused on Pete Campbell when he raped the au pair across the hall. Those episodes are great and are sometimes the best ones of the season, but the Kings need their stars to continue the season-long arc and get to the playoffs.
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