Frozen Fury

I was at the game tonight and no one really stood out in my mind. It was a pretty good game, but no one made that spectacular play, or really did anything that made me say WOW!. So the following is just my tired ramblings and thoughts.

In the line up were:

Fowards:                                                              Defensemen:

T. Arnason                                                           B. Clark

B. Guite                                                                K. Cuminsky

M. Hendricks                                                       A. Foote

T.J. Hesiiick                                                        S. Hannan

I. Laperriere                                                        J. Leopold

Per Ledin                                                            J.M. Liles

the Cody's  (McLeod and McCormick)

S. Parker                                                            Goalies:

J. Sakic                                                               A. Raycroft

Chris Stewart                                                     J. Bacashihua

Darcy Tucker

Sacik played most of the night with Tucker and Hensiiick. The rest of the lines seemed to juggle a little bit.

The two goals that the Kings scored about 30 seconds apart were terrible. The first beat Raycroft top shelf just over his glove, while the second went the other direction, just over the blocker.   I called the Av's shorthanded goal; though Guite got an assist instead of the goal. His first pass hit a King's stick and bounced right back to him. The second attempt found it way across the ice and then Hendricks put it into the back of the net.  Sakic assisted on the other two goals (Tucker and Leopold) earning him the 2nd star.  Hensiiick scored as the first shooter in the SO - which ended up being the winner and it earned him the 3rd star...typical stupid home town media, Kopitar was the 1st star.  Stewart shot second in the shoot out, well he didn't actually shoot. He lost the puck and it float toward the line as Ersberg was sliding backwards into his net,  it almost worked....

The power play is still terrible.  The Avs squandered the first 3:13 of the 5:00 penalty in the first period by passing the puck and not shooting.  Then they got the 5-3 and they started shooting but couldn't capitalize.  Later in the game when they got the 4:00 power play (the high stick that took Liles out of the game) the Avs still just sat there passing the damn puck, that is when they actually got intot he Kings zone and  got set up.  The only bright side was that there were 2 D-men on the ice for the PP.  Sakic was not playing the point. Unfortunately they couldn't score even with a 1:47 of 3-5 and to powerplay's of 4:00+.

The first two fights were pretty good.  The one with Stewart was pretty much a draw.  The McLeod fight I would have to give to the LA players (still close though),  and Parker kicked the crap out of some rookie (though Parker went to the ice twice - the second time pulling the King player on top of himself. Lappy tried to get in a couple but the officials were pretty quick to break those up. 

I didn't see exactly what happened when McCormick got ejected.  All I saw was him drop on top of a King player (who was down on the ice) and start hitting him.  They called Cody for spearing???

Footer was pissed when he got his first penalty.   He too went after the King player while the King was on the ice,  which drew some pretty pathetic cries from the King fans....they bood him the rest of the night and challenged his manhood.  Not sure exactly what happened but it must have been pretty bad for a guy like Foote to go after the player while he was down.

Two little skirmishes happened infront of the benches, both looked like they were started by Kings goons...the second one Foote jump into help his teammate, while a King player did the same, Foote got a misconduct penalty and was tossed, the King (Handzus - I think) got away scott free.

Over all the Avs just seemed out of sync.  Their passes weren't great and they couldn't keep the puck on their sticks.  Raycroft redeemed himself in the third period with a couple of big save (and a little luck) when the Avs kept getting called for penalties.  Especially late when he snowmanned in the crease.  All the LA fans thought it was a goal, Raycroft tried to slide himself forward a little before sitting up.  When he finally sat up the puck was about 4 inches form the line. The reviewed the goal (I think) and announced it never crossed the line.

It will be interesting to see who actually makes the team. Cuminsky played pretty well and made some good plays to get back on rushes that would have beat most d-men. Ledin was alright, but I didn't see anything spectacular.  Hensiiick had some nice moves, but wasn't able to finish them off.  Hendricks look good at times and struggled at others. Tucker was pretty physical most of the night as was Lappy.