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As I covered yesterday, Anze Kopitar is a very good hockey player. No player is perfect, however, and there's a few things I think Kopitar could work on. They're just little things and I fully expect him to improve on them during the upcoming season. If this could not happen that'd be great too. The biggest thing Kopitar needs to do is cut down on his turnovers. Kopitar ended up 8th in ...
Tags:
NHL
Anze Kopitar
Los Angeles Kings
32 G, 45 A, -15, 22 PIM I don't know if you know this, but: Anze Kopitar is pretty good. He spends most of the game with the puck on his stick and is masterful at creating opportunities for himself and his teammates. Probably my favorite thing about Kopitar is his ability to change his game to counteract his defender's tactics. Kopitar thrived his first season because he outwaited his ...
Tags:
NHL
Anze Kopitar
Los Angeles Kings
As I noted a week ago, it's hockey photoshop contest season , and today I'll show what I've done for the Pensblog's anti-Wayne movement . If you recall, their challenge was easy enough: "The task is simple, make photoshops that depict Wayne Gretzky in a negative way or just make fun of him." Well, just like before when I had trouble making Gary Bettman look heroic , I'm similarly challenged ...
Tags:
NHL
Wayne Gretzky
James "The Commissioner" Gordon of the Ottawa Citizen managed to muckrake a few possible alternate logos for the upcoming season. Among them is the alternate logo for the Los Angeles Kings. Eep. That's going to be on the front of the jersey? Yikes. It's basically a giant arrow pointing down at their dicks. That would look good on the shoulder of the jerseys, but on the front it would look like ...
Tags:
NHL
Los Angeles Kings
If you didn't see the news, former San Jose Shark (and LA King but, uh, we can conveniently forget that since he was basically injured the whole time) Alyn McCauley officially retired and became an assistant coach at Queen's University . It's unfortunate, but McCauley's last fully healthy season was 2003-2004; during that year, Sharks fans really got to see McCauley play to his potential. Not ...
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NHL
San Jose Sharks
Alyn McCauley
This Sunday, everyone's favorite Slovenian is turning 21 years old. To celebrate, we here at Battle of California are going to spend this week commemorating the lovable bastard, covering what he's improved upon since his first game, what he still needs to work on, and where he sits in the hierarchy of young stars. Today, however, we're going to kick things off with three of my favorite ...
Tags:
NHL
Los Angeles Kings
Chris Pronger
Anze Kopitar
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The Chief over at Abel to Yzerman has
created a bit of a project to pass the
summer dead time, trying to categorically determine who really represents Detroit’s best current rival . He starts his study with the Colorado Avalanche, the first of ten ...
Well, he did get in one tussle last season... although he ended up getting hurt in that fight and missed a month.
Tags:
NHL
Los Angeles Kings
Calgary Flames
No, no, yes, is that a bee, yes, yes, probably, lose weight, definitely yes! The Stupid: The Kings are getting ice girls. I personally don't like the concept of ice girls. Hold on, hear me out. I'm fine with women being objectified for my amusement; I mean, I watched every episode of She Spies . However, I do have a problem with them being on the ice because they take away a job from ...
Tags:
NHL
Los Angeles Kings
71 Games, 23 G, 44 A, +1, 22 PIM Grade: B Last Season: A common criticism of Alex Frolov is that he's inconsistent, a charge that I've never understood. Frolov has increased his point total every single year except for the last, but even then his points per game still went up. By now, we all know what Frolov is: he's a good player who doesn't shoot enough but can control the game with his ...
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NHL
Los Angeles Kings
Alexander Frolov
(This is Part 2 of my "things I found when packing up for a move" series. Part 1 is here .) You know, my life isn't all about going to Ducks games and then drawing cartoons about them. On occasion, I've even been known to attend a Kings game every now and again. It's sort of a fun outing, as I don't have to worry about any real rooting interest, and hey, it's something I can't see on Versus ...
Tags:
NHL
Los Angeles Kings
Mathieu Schneider
Washington Capitals
Versus released their schedule for the upcoming season and once again California gets screwed. The Kings don't have a game, Anaheim is on once, and San Jose plays 3 times. The entire state of California is on Versus as much as the New York Islanders. I guess this is good for me because it means I get Bob and Jimmy more often, but still.
Tags:
NHL
Anaheim Ducks
San Jose Sharks
New York Islanders
Los Angeles Kings
Mathieu Schneider's agent is on board! It's building, folks, like some kind of building being built. [SLEEK EDIT: Also relevant, after taking two weeks off with some sort of bullshit "I'm moving" excuse, I got back to PuckTooning! Conveniently, the subject is also about breaking up with Schneider .]
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NHL
Mathieu Schneider
Anaheim Ducks
Los Angeles Kings
It's funny, I don't even like basketball that much. Yet here I am, up at 6 in the morning screaming obscenities at some ugly Greek for knocking Dwyane Wade to the ground (and I hate Dwyane Wade) . I think I now know how Canadians feel when they're watching their national hockey team, because I know that we're the best basketball nation around but I still feel the need to validate it in this ...
Tags:
NHL
65 GP, 7 G, 13 A, 20 pts, -11, 18 PIM Grade: D Last Season: Say what you want about Michal Handzus, but at least he isn't that bad defensively. Kyle Calder was basically worthless last season while riding shotgun on Handzus' line and was benched a few times near the end of the season. He missed the last 7 games of the season with a finger injury and the team seemed better without him. ...
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NHL
Kyle Calder
Los Angeles Kings
Wow. Well in the wake of Puck Daddy's wildly successful Gary Bettman Photoshop Contest (230 submissions, not even counting my own ) , I guess art contests have become the blogger rage to help cope with the dead days of August. Of course, as a hockey-photoshop fiend myself, I wholly endorse all creative endeavors in this field, so I'm here to highlight both of the current contests before even ...
Tags:
NHL
Wayne Gretzky
Vancouver Canucks
Roberto Luongo
Terms not disclosed. Heeeyyy.... Drew Doughty is kind of weird-looking. He looks like the friend of the most popular guy in school. He looks like the guy that plays football with the popular guys but doesn't get any chicks. This guy's there in any group, but you don't notice him because Hollywood movies replace him with the black guy. My favorite Token is the guy from Psych and West Wing ...
Tags:
NHL
Los Angeles Kings
Dustin Brown led the league with 311 hits, which is all very cool. More important, however, was the fact that Brown led the league in hits while still being remarkably clean. I was bored so I took a look at the top 3 leaders in hits (Brown, Mike Komisarek and Brenden Morrow) to see how many "aggression penalties" (elbowing, roughing, charging, etc.) each guy got. The result? Brown's worth is ...
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NHL
Dustin Brown
Brenden Morrow
Mike Komisarek
Los Angeles Kings
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"So I was watching Ellen the other day
and..." Wayne Gretzky is not a physically imposing specimen.
He basically looks like an old lesbian , someone who'd teach a cooking class at the local community center. I always have trouble explaining to ...
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In the process of moving, I’ve had a
chance to go through some of my old piles
of junk, and as is usually the case in such undertakings, I have uncovered some real gems from the kid who would grow up to become Earl Sleek. Back before I had an ...
The Red Wings’ Biggest Rival: the Ducks? Here’s ...