``I'm very happy that I'll be staying with this organization for a long time,'' said Visnovsky from his offseason home in Slovakia. ``I love Los Angeles and I want to play in the playoffs with the Kings.''
To take a look at how the trade shakes out for the Oilers, stop over at Lowetide, where the reaction seems uniformly positive, while Covered in Oil seems more than a bit hesitant. In any case, with Visnovsky in the fold, it looks like Joni Pitkanen's days in an Oilers uniform may be coming to an end.
Then again, I'm sure there's at least one party who is probably happy with the deal: That would be Los Angeles-based supermodel Rachel Hunter, who will probably be happy to have her boyfriend, Stoll, back in town a little more often.
``There's absolutely nothing to it,'' Lombardi said of rumors that the Kings might trade for Malkin. ``I talked to (the Penguins) as part of my due diligence to talk to every team. Then I hear all these reports that we're getting him. I had to call Ray (Shero, Penguins GM) this morning and say, `I hear I'm trading for him. What am I giving you?'''
Meanwhile, across town at the LA Times, Lisa Dilman has her own interview with Lombardi where he declares he's keeping the second pick in the draft even though three teams have made him offers. And though it's widely though that Lombardi would select defenseman Drew Doughty of the Guelph Storm, he declined to say anything definite about who he would pick.
Malkin for [Mike] Cammalleri and what could be blue-chip defenseman Drew Doughty or Russian dynamo Nikita Filatov would be at best a steal for the Kings and, at worst, close to equal value once the rookies ripen.
No kidding. Greg goes on to add that a deal like this could be a real moment of truth for the Kings franchise, and I can't disagree. If this rumor is even close to being true, and when you're dealing with Garrioch you always have to wonder out loud whether or not it is, there's no reason in my mind that LA GM Dean Lombardi wouldn't be doing anything and everything in his power to get the paperwork on this signed, sealed and delivered before Pittsburgh GM Ray Shero changes his mind.
But as mind boggling as this deal might be, there's another question we ought to be asking: Whether or not Malkin wants to stay in Pittsburgh, is it really in his best interest to do so?
I can't help but think back to the just completed season and recall that Malkin didn't come into his own until Sidney Crosby was lost to injury. No matter how long Malkin might be in Pittsburgh, the Penguins will always be Crosby's team. Maybe moving 3,000 miles and lifting a team on his own shoulders might just show us what Malkin could really do?
No, Last Call with Carson Daly isn't Leno, but when you're on the talk show circuit promoting the hardest working professional sports league in North America, you go when you're invited. I'm guessing this was taped earlier in the week so Nick Lidstrom could get back to Toronto in time for last night's NHL Awards Show.
Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity. To tell the truth, like a lot of Southern California hockey fans, I'm not really sure why the Los Angeles Kings suddenly fired head coach Marc Crawford this week. Sure, the Kings have been suffering through miserable results the last couple of years, compiling a cumlative 76-105-24 record since January 2006, but General Manager Dean Lombardi could have fired Crawford for that two months ago when the regular season ended.
I really thought that once Crawford survived January, he would be around at the start of next season. I figured that he would be fired if the Kings got off to a rocky start next season, but never did I imagine he would be fired two months after the season. Lombardi also gave no indication that it was coming, and he was asked on a semi-regular basis. To hear him explain it, it's a decision he reached only in the last week or so.
So really the question becomes: what in the last week changed Lombardi's mind? As a cartoonist with no insider information, I can only speculate, of course. Who knows? Perhaps it was a case of Crawford using the Kings' zambonis to gel up his hair. I'm usually wrong on these things, but in the face of imperfect information, I usually go with what I know.
If anyone has any better theories on why Crawford was let go this week, let me know in the comments.
When word of the firing of Mark Crawford crossed the wire this afternoon, the rest of the folks on the NHL team here at FanHouse started to ask an obvious question: Why in the world did the Kings wait so long after the season to cashier him?
It's not like the handwriting wasn't on the wall a whole lot earlier. In just two seasons in Los Angeles, Crawford was a rather unimpressive 59-84-21, not exactly what GM Dean Lombardi was hoping for when he tapped the former Stanley Cup-winning head coach to take over the Kings in the Spring of 2006.
So it looks like Elisha Cuthbert gets passed around the NHL more than a hockey puck. Here she is with Dion Phaneuf from the Calgary Flames. Now I'm not 100% sure that's him since his face looks like it's taken more beatings than Lindsay Lohan's ...
Yowch, feel the snark! Hollywood is a rough place.
Though the folks at HT don't seem to be completely sure that it's Phaneuf that they've captured walking beside Cuthbert, the hockey braintrust here at FanHouse is happy to confirm their suspicion -- that's certainly Phaneuf in this blowup.
As other have noted, this would mean that Cuthbert has completed something of an NHL dating hat trick, progressing from Rangers bad boy Sean Avery, through Habs defenseman Mike Komisarek and now to Phaneuf, the highest paid of the three.
As far as I'm concerned, we're very happy that Cuthbert has decided to cut a swath through the NHL. In fact, we're just waiting for the moment she gets hitched to a hockey player and starts dishing to the press much like Willa Ford, aka Mrs. Mike Modano.
That can't be right. Or can it? The Kings have always seemed to have some financial trouble, dating back to before the lockout. That's common knowledge. After that we went through an entire year without hockey for the sole purpose of restoring the financial viability of all the clubs. There were, and are, no guarantees that the clubs are all in the green, but from everything we have been told over the last three years they are doing much better than prior to the lockout. But wait ... The Los Angeles Daily News reported today that the Kings are losing more money now than they were prior to the lockout. Those emboldened words are key here.
I'll let that you soak that in for a moment while I present you with an excerpt from the Daily News.
The Kings declined to release specific numbers, but said they're losing more money per year now than before the lockout. At the start of the lockout, the Kings claimed to be losing $8 to $10 million a year.
"We're building our organization differently, to meet the reality that we're losing even more than we did before the lockout," chief marketing officer Chris McGowan said. "We have to run a better business."
Thus, the ticket-price increases, even coming off a season in which the Kings tied for the fewest points in the NHL. The Kings believe the increases are necessary, in part, to help stabilize their bottom line.
So are the Kings really losing more money now than before the lockout? Wasn't the point of the lockout to fix problems such as these?
The Los Angeles Kings have captured the spirit of those ads in one of the single greatest NHL commercials I've ever seen, produced to pimp a "player figurine" ticket package. The attention to detail is stunning, right down to the G.I. Joe-style font for the logo at the end. Awesome doesn't do this justice. Whammy! "GO KIIIIIIINGS!"
Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.
One aspect of NHL hockey that I really appreciate is how there are no sure bets. Most of the time, the best teams will beat the worst teams, but on any given night, the odds could get thrown right out the window.
Take last night's game between the last-place L.A. Kings visiting the first-place Detroit Red Wings. Even though the Kings brought a 6-2-1 record in their last nine road games, Detroit was the class of the league. The Wings had won eight straight games, and had amassed a whopping 21-4-2 record at the Joe Louis Arena.
Going into the third period, the Red Wings appeared to have another victory predictably wrapped up, having built a 3-1 lead on the strength of two Henrik Zetterberg goals. Only once this season had Detroit blown a 3rd period lead at home, so seemingly the mighty Goliath had David by the throat.
In biblical fashion, though, David forgot to die.
(More after the break, plus nine other games of varying significance!)
Over at Inside the Kings, Rich Hammond pulled the following Lubomir Visnovsky quote out of his archives, one that the defenseman uttered about a year ago when he signed a 5-year, $28 million contract extension with the team:
The best hockey blog you're probably not reading these days is 
For the past couple of months now we've been reading rumors of 
Every day from Monday to Saturday, 
