Ducks forget to dress Pronger for his debut

Yee-ouch. Ducks opened up their preseason with a stinker, losing 7-1 to the Kings. Thank goodness it was radio-only, as that may have saved me from clawing out my eyes.

On the main stats that mattered, Kings went 4-7 on their PP while the Ducks went 0-8 (generating a pitiful 4 PP shots).

Scoring per my notes:
8:02 1st L.A. Avery 1 (Pushkarev, Norstrom)
11:47 1st L.A. Dallman 1 PP (Armstrong, Moulson)
0:58 2nd ANA Getzlaf 1 (O’Donnell, Melin)
7:55 2nd L.A. Moulson 1 PP (Armstrong, Dallman)
13:00 2nd L.A. Dallman 2 (Armstrong, Brown)
7:25 3rd L.A. Willsie 1 PP (Avery, Sopel)
16:40 3rd L.A. Belanger 1 (Thornton, Willsie)
18:47 3rd L.A. Pushkarev 1 PP (Weaver, Dallman)

Note that Leighton and Garon played the first thirty minutes and Bryzgalov and LaBarbara finished off the game.

Anaheim roster:
G – I. Bryzgalov, M. Leighton
D – F. Beauchemin, S. O’Donnell, J. DiPenta, S. O’Brien, B. Salcido, K. Huskins
F – R. Getzlaf, C. Perry, D. Penner, R. Niedermayer, S. Pahlsson, T. Green, R. Shannon, B. Melin, K. Stewart, S. Thornton, T. Gillies, B. Ryan

L.A. Kings were notably without D. Cloutier, R. Blake, C. Conroy, A. Frolov, A. McCauley, A. Kopitar, and P. O’Sullivan.

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I know preseason doesn’t count for anything, but here’s a little tip, Ducks.

A fair amount of people (thank god I wasn’t one of them!) paid regular-season prices to see what might have been Chris Pronger’s first game in the Duck uniform (against the cross-town rivals, no less!). Instead they paid regular-season prices to see a prospect squad half-ass its way to the team’s worst individual-game result since the lockout.

If you want to generate some local excitement about this year’s chances , if you want a fanbase of repeat customers who will pay to attend games, try not to fuck ‘em on the first day of school.

They may be fake games with apparently fake hype, but it is not fake money we’re spending.

See ya Wednesday for a better effort,

Sleek

[EDIT: Though I appear to have lost the ability to comment there, Duck's Blog has some firsthand reaction to the game. Also, Dan Wood of the OC Register has begun his own MSM Ducks blog today--that has some promise.]

[EDIT2: Another entry on Mr. Wood's blog indicates that tomorrow's lineup against SJ will feature J.S. Giguere, S. Niedermayer, C. Pronger, F. Beauchemin, T. Selanne, A. McDonald, R. Getzlaf, C. Perry, D. Penner, T. Marchant, T. Fedoruk, and S. Chistov. I sure got lucky in picking which preseason game to attend!]