Sleeksays

Derek Armstrong- 11:21 TOI, 0 G, 0 A, -3, 0 SOG, 0 PIM Brian Boyle- 11:19 TOI, 0 G, 0 A, -3, 0 SOG, 4 PIM Raitis Ivanans- 9:59 TOI, 0 g, 0 A, -2, 0 SOG, 8 PIM I'm not even mad, I'm impressed.

-Can't score? Check. -Can't keep the puck out of their own zone? Check. -Takes 2 penalties, including one when the opposing team has the puck stationary behind their own net? Check. That Zeiler-Boyle-Ivanans line is terrible. Can make Derek Armstrong a coach, waive Zeiler and bring up Matt Moulson and Ted Purcell? *** The Maxi-PAD line was matched up against Ovechkin's line all night, with Dustin Brown pretty much shadowing Ovy all night. Ovechkin was getting frustrated and in the third period took it out on Dustin Brown, blindsiding Brown with a little bit of an elbow in front of the net when the puck was in the corner; unfortunately for Ovy, Brown's skate got up and clipped Ovechkin in the ear. He fell to the ice and rolled around for a little while before he got up and realized he was getting a penalty for interference. Suddenly his ear wasn't bothering him that much anymore. Exactly one minute later, Dustin Brown scored on the power play. Hilarious. ***...

So here's what happened, best as I can piece together. Brian Boyle smashes Rob Niedermayer into the sideboards. Travis Moen skates in to hit Boyle, but is quickly pulled aside by Tom Preissing. Niedermayer comes up swinging, but is wrestled down to the ice by Boyle. Your typical BoC get-together. Here's the announcer: "Anaheim penalties to #32 Travis Moen, two minutes for roughing. #44 Rob Niedermayer a double minor, four minutes for roughing. Los Angeles penalty to #22 Brian Boyle, two minutes for roughing. Anaheim has the option of playing two men short for two minutes, or one man short for four minutes. " First question: Has anyone ever heard of a coach given an option of how they'd prefer to serve their team's penalties before? Is that even textbook legal, or just something that sort of got slipped in the heat of game action? But now that it's happened, here's question two: if you were a coach in that situation which option would you choose? Bot...

Los Angeles Kings (2-2) vs. Colorado Avalanche (2-3) 7:30 PST, FSN West Brian Boyle is 24 years old. While others from his draft class are firmly established NHL players by now (Dustin Brown and Patrick O'Sullivan, for example) , Boyle is still struggling to find his place in the league. Boyle doesn't have the speed or the hands to really become a top offensive player so the plan was to get him used to playing in a bottom role. The Kings only played him about 9 minutes a game in preseason in hopes that he could adjust and use his body more. The Kings hoped that Boyle join forces with Derek Armstrong and Raitis Ivanans to become a terror to opposing teams. Instead, Boyle's line has been embarrassing and Boyle has accrued a -4 rating in 3 games. That's awful when you consider that Boyle has been playing sheltered minutes and he's only played in home games so far. I think the problem isn't that Boyle isn't using his body like the Kings have asked; the ...