NHL los angeles Kings

The Los Angeles Kings entered the offseason with a fair amount of cap space and plethora of young assets that could have been used to bring in a big-name player to help boost a young team from Western Conference bottom-feeder to legitimate playoff contender. Personally, I was pushing for disgruntled Senators forward Dany Heatley, who seemed like he would have been a nice fit. The Kings, however, may have found an even better fit, when you consider Heatley is, apparently, out of his mind and doesn't quite know what he wants or where he wants to go.

Late Friday night, the Kings acquired veteran forward Ryan Smyth from the Colorado Avalanche for defensemen Kyle Quincey and Tom Preissing, and a fifth-round draft pick. For the Kings? They get a gritty, veteran leader still capable of scoring 25-30 goals. For the Avs? It's a salary dump, and a head start in the season-long quest for Taylor Hall.

Word surfaced earlier this week that Ottawa Senators forward, and two-time 50-goal scorer, Dany Heatley requested a trade after four seasons in Canada's capital city.

The news has resulted in a firestorm of debate and commentary across the Canadian media, including a rather scathing article by Don Brennan of the Ottawa Sun that goes as far as to compare Heatley to another former Senators forward, Alexei Yashin. Harsh. And it's unfortunate, for Ottawa's sake anyway, that Mike Milbury is no longer in charge of running an NHL team into the ground. Think of the possibilities!

The NHL Lottery is a serious exercise in television programming. It takes an event that could be completed in less than five minutes and stretches it out into a 30 minute program that makes the jitters that much worse for the fanbases and teams involved.

That doesn't mean the Draft Lottery live on TSN Tuesday night was a bad thing, though. TSN did a nice job filling the other 25 minutes with interviews, prospect analysis and John Tavares vs. Victor Hedman hype tonight. But, at the end of the day, all we came to find out is the answer to the question "who will pick No. 1?"

Joey Mullen had a fabulous NHL career. He played 16 seasons in the league, and he was the first American-born player to attain 500 goals and 1,000 career points. His career earned him induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2000.

Joey Mullen's son, Patrick, has just completed a solid college career at the University of Denver. Unlike his father, who made a name for himself as a top forward, Patrick Mullen flipped back and forth between forward and defense during his four-year college career. His solid play, and willingness to do whatever the team needed him to do, earned him a two-year deal with the Los Angeles Kings.

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Penguins center Evgeni Malkin added to his league-leading point total on Friday night, picking up a goal and an assist in Pittsburgh's 4-1 win over the Los Angeles Kings. He was also at the center of some controversy late in the third period when he dished out this hit on Kings forward Wayne Simmonds.

Quite a night for Vancouver forward Henrik Sedin on Friday, as the veteran forward scored a pair of goals and added an assist in the Canucks 4-2 win over Los Angeles.

After the Kings rallied for a pair of goals in 36 seconds to tie the game, 2-2, Sedin answered just over a minute later when he scored two of his own just 32 seconds apart. The first goal was the 100th of his career; the second goal was a beauty that left Kings defenseman Sean O'Donnell searching for his athletic supporter.

Even though the NHL's trade deadline has already passed, deals are still being announced because, as ESPN describes it, there's been a log jam at the NHL's fax machine. For some reason the idea of the NHL, in this world of modern technology, still using a fax machine on its biggest day of the regular season is somewhat hilarious. Does the league still hammer out salary cap details with an abacus? Does Gary Bettman get his trade alerts via beeper?

One of the deals being announced is a four-team trade that involves Erik Cole returning to the Carolina Hurricanes, Edmonton receiving Patrick O'Sullivan and Ales Kotalik, Los Angeles picking up Justin Williams, and Buffalo getting a draft pick. If only it were that simple.

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Weeks of rumors, innuendo, and e5s will finally come to a head on Wednesday. At 3pm Eastern, the NHL trade deadline will pass. You can follow all the activity with our NHL Trade Deadline Tracker.

Entering play Tuesday night, 23 NHL teams are either in a playoff position or within six points of one. While this is great for the playoff races, it's not so good for the deadline. It minimizes the number of potential sellers, drives up the trade market for the few players who should be available, and leaves us wondering if any big deals will go down. Here's a look at how the Western Conference looks heading into the deadline.

If you didn't stay up late Monday night, you missed one of the better NHL games of the season. The Atlanta Thrashers jumped to leads of 3-0 in the first period and 6-3 in the third, but the Los Angeles Kings wouldn't quit. Two Anze Kopitar goals helped the Kings amazingly tie the game late in the third period. The game went to a shootout, where Atlanta prevailed, 2-1. The 7-6 win was the Thrashers' second in as many nights in southern California. They have 14 regulation goals in those two games. Thanks to the point they got with their comeback, the Kings are five points out of a playoff spot in the Western Conference.

Before the season, you probably could have turned a lot of heads by predicting that the Los Angeles Kings would make a run at a Western Conference playoff spot. They finished dead-last in the West a year ago, 20 points out of a playoff spot.

There is still a lot of hockey to go, but the Kings are on the verge of one of the league's better turnarounds this season. Heading into the start of a three-game homestand Thursday night, the Kings are just three points out of the eighth spot in the West, and they're playing the best hockey of any of the teams they're fighting with.