The Vancouver Canucks rolled into Staples Center looking for two points, which they easily took from us. Not to say that I was predicting the Kings to win, but if the Kings came out and played well, we could have had the two points instead. Coulda woulda shoulda.

For this game I was sitting in section 108 with a group of women that I did a beginner’s workshop with back in July. We learned to play hockey together and I’m now an alternate for the team that was formed from the workshop. It was good times except that a certain someone and her guest were hammered and it was clear that she didn’t go to too many Kings games or else she would have realized that you don’t need to scream "GO KINGS!" every time they have possession. But good times nonetheless! I must admit, the view from that section left much to be desired. I could only really see clear plays when the puck was on my side of the rink; other than that, I had to look at the jumbo tron to watch the plays. This was also a bit difficult since the person wielding the camera must have been stoned because the camera had difficultly following the puck and anticipating the action on the ice. Maybe the dude with that job was new at it, I have no idea. But the everything combined made it difficult for me to get really involved with the game, which turned out to actually be a good thing since the Kings were taken to task by the Canucks.

List of notables:

• Roberto Luongo is really good. On one play, Drew Doughty took the puck in deep into the offensive zone all the way behind Luongo, made a sharp pass to the front of the net where Oscar Moller was waiting, and Luongo absolutely robbed my poor rookies.
• The second line suffered with Kyle Calder in for Patrick O’Sullivan.
• Peter Harrold is not doing well. Plain and simple; he needs work. When Jack Johnson gets back in the lineup, Harrold can go to Manchester. For now, please, please, please put back in Tom Preissing so that he can be the point man on the 2nd PP unit. I can’t handle this anymore.
• I don’t know what to say about the goaltending anymore. I know Terry Murray wants to keep going with Jason LaBarbera, but can’t Erik Ersberg get at least one start in the next couple of games?
• After hearing all this talk about Kyle Wellwood, I was finally gonna get a chance to see him play in person. First off, he’s tiny even though he appears to be bacon on skates. He just doesn’t look to be fit as do other smaller players such as Danny Briere, Michael Cammalleri, and Jiri Hudler. It was the oddest thing to see him skating around during warm-ups. He also has very feminine facial features, which took me by surprise and I couldn’t focus on anything else really except that he creeped me out a bit.

So the Kings obviously were shutout but had almost 30 shots on net. I’m very interested in Terry Murray’s next move...