Hats Galore! Kings 6, Blues 2

The Kings shake up the lines and they put on a show for the devoted LA fans. After an inconsistent couple of games, they boys come roaring back with some big roster tweaks. Teddy Purcell had been recalled from the Manchester Monarchs and placed on the right wing with Anze Kopitar and Patrick O’Sullivan. Dustin Brown was moved to the second line right wing and played without his heterosexual life partner for perhaps the first time this season. This being the case I was pretty nervous about how Teddy was going to do, but it turned out that I didn’t have to worry because play well he did, albeit only getting 10:05 of TOI. I’m sure he didn’t play as physical as the coaching staff wanted him to play (which had been the knock against him in training camp), but I think he did well enough in his first game up with the big boys this season. I will point out though that there were some blatant passes that he just could not get a stick on right in front of the goal. That being said, he was 100 times better there than Kyle Calder was, and I’m sure his ice time will increase steadily as long as he continues an upward trend in his performance.

On the defensive end, Drew Doughty was paired up with Kyle Quincey and Sean O’Donnell was moved over with Matt Greene. I wasn’t devastated with this switch when I heard about it and I think it proved the point that the Kings just needed a little tweaking to get back to their normal form. The defensemen were in fine form and there were no complaints from me about them. And Quincey got two assists. That’s right, TWO.

I was irritated with two things in this game: (1) The fact that John Zeiler sucks. Every time he was out on the ice, I thought he was going to ram someone’s head into the boards, which he kind of did at one point. Once again, he doesn’t hit well and is just wild out there. Have the Kings ever considered shock therapy? I heard Carrie Fisher swears by it; (2) At the end of the game, one Blues player tried to engage Raitis Ivanans in a fight but Ivanans wasn’t having any of that. The situation ended with a ref holding Ivanans whilst being surrounded by 4 Blues. 4!!! Was that necessary?

Back to the good things:

• Brownie was basically awesome. He’s a great all-around player and he was just doing the right things in this game and he was rewarded with a hat trick.
• Kopi’s first goal was pretty freaking great. Teddy’s pass to Sully who backhanded it to Kopi with the wide open net. Ahhhh, sweetness. There was no way Chris Mason was going to stop that one. Watch it here!
• The Kings capitalized with three PP goals to start off the game.
• Concurrently, the Kings were 100% on the PK.

The only negative to the game was that the boys were 48% in the faceoff circle. Booooo. C’mon, Stoll; we’re not paying you to be 43% here. So the Kings trot out another solid game and I only have about a day and a half to revel in this success because the Minnesota Wild are swinging through LA on Saturday. We shall see how the boys fare against the trapping Wild.

Lastly: Here is some RARE national coverage on Brown! Please read here.

Tags: Alexander Frolov, Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty, Dustin Brown, Kyle Calder, Patrick O'Sullivan, Raitis Ivanans