Kings Gameday: Stupid Noon Games

Los Angeles Kings (12-24-2, eep!) @ Colorado Avalanche (21-14-2, 5th in West)

Here I was, all ready to write a big post examining why the Kings have played so poorly this season (short version: they're awful at everything), but I forgot the game was at noon today. Whoops! Anyway, the Kings are terrible and have lost 8 games in a row; they haven't scored more than 3 goals in that span. They're not a team that's going to win a lot of 2-1 games, so they really need to pick up their scoring if they're going to have a chance today.

Remember when I wrote this and asked "Who would you disappear?" Apparently Dean Lombardi read that and decided he'd disappear John Zeiler. I'm not a big fan of John Zeiler because he sucks at hockey and his checks are meaningless, but I did appreciate the fact that he actually seemed to care. Kevin Dallman also broke his foot a week ago, so Jon Klemm got the call-up to sit on the bench. I guarantee you, though, that he will be playing important minutes of Tom Preissing. It's a lock.

We'll see how Crawford chooses to "set" his lines without Cammalleri in the line-up again; he'll probably go with Brown-Kopitar-O'Sully and Frolov-Armstrong-Nagy, although maybe he'll just say, "Fuck it," and put Bowlby up with Kopitar again. Did you guys see that? That was weird as hell.

I'm off for the rest of the new year and possibly a few days after it. Take a little time off yourself if you're a Kings fan and try to forget about their suckitude for a while. This is Valley Forge, people, and these are the times that try men's souls. All we can do is grit our teeth and accept it. Complaining about how badly the Kings suck isn't going to change anything, and picking up a guy like Marc Denis or Andrew Raycroft is only going to exacerbate our problems. We all knew this was going to be a rebuilding process; we can't throw in the towel just because we don't like losing.

Prediction: Long live the rebuild! Kings lose, 4-2. Goals by Handzus and Visnovsky.