Larry Brown Sports

Let’s be honest. With the Kings in the Stanley Cup Finals, a lot of people in the L.A. region who haven’t a clue about hockey or the Kings are jumping on the bandwagon (driven by Enter Your Favorite Hollywood Star Here).

And while Conan O’Brien isn’t jumping on the Kings bandwagon per se, he showed he obviously has no grasp on anything NHL- or Kings-related when he tried to make a topical joke about the team in this tweet sent Friday:

The @LAKings are playing the @PhoenixCoyotes? I wonder which city that shouldn’t have a hockey team will win.

— Conan O’Brien (@ConanOBrien) May 25, 2012

Not bad, Conan — if it was sent a week earlier. The Kings, of course, disposed of the Coyotes on Tuesday, making Conan’s tweet outdated and useless. Knowing Conan, he’ll probably joke that an intern will get fired for letting him send that tweet. If Twitter was fair game for Conan’s Fan Corrections segment, the tweet would probably be the subject of a hefty portion of viewer submissions.

The Kings’ Twitter account, which has been on a roll these playoffs, was none too amused by O’Brien’s failed attempt at a joke and fired back with a joke of its own:

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At first it was NBC LA botching the Kings’ logo, then it was FOX’s Liz Habib butchering some highlights, and now it’s CBS’ turn to screw up something LA Kings-related.

CBS rolled some Kings mascot footage before showing Kings-Coyotes highlights from Game 4, but they used the Sacramento Kings mascot.

Disappointingly, the blunder gives CBS LA into repeat offender status.

H/T Marcus Vanderberg

Over the weekend, Russia finished off an amazing undefeated run to win the IIHF World Championship. Led by NHL stars Alexander Ovechkin, Pavel Datsyuk and Evgeni Malkin, the Russians were hardly ever tested in the tournament. By winning their first gold since 2009 and defeating Slovakia 6-2 in the final game, Russia has once again established itself as a world hockey powerhouse. However, they could use some improvement when it comes to postgame celebration.

As you can see from the video above, Russian goalie Semyon Varlamov took a tumble as he was raising the championship trophy in triumph on Sunday afternoon. Fortunately for Varlamov and his teammates, he was able to land safely on his can and avoid an Alabama-style trophy disaster right in the middle of the ice. If the trophy were as big as the Stanley Cup, I can see the weight of it bringing a player to the ice. With this trophy being about 1/8 the size and Varlamov playing a position that requires tremendous balance, I’m not exactly sure what happened here. We’ll just call it the exhaustion of victory.

The eighth-seeded L.A. Kings have been the story of the NHL playoffs this year, losing only once and carrying a 3-0 conference finals lead over the Coyotes into Sunday. The Kings have seen outstanding performances from Anze Kopitar and captain Dustin Brown. But none more crucial to the team’s unlikely run has been goalie Jonathan Quick, who’s a Conn Smythe contender with his 1.41 goals-against average, tops this postseason. The Kings have even celebrated their netminder’s stinginess with this creative poster:

You’d be better off if it was your wife’s way of telling you to make it quick.

Photo via Beto Duran

Jamaica is well on its way to fielding its own national ice hockey team after the International Ice Hockey Federation voted the country as an associate member on Friday.

Associate member status means that the country still can’t compete in any IIHF sanctioned events, but the wheels certainly are in motion with the goal of fielding a team for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Yes, Jamaica, the tiny Caribbean island nation with only one ice rink in its borders, is working on sending a hockey team to a Winter Olympiad. The comparisons to the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Games, immortalized by the tremendous film “Cool Runnings,” are all too obvious. The bobsled team, in fact, partly inspired the Jamaican Olympic Ice Hockey Team (JOIHT) and helped blaze a trail for it.

“We had Devon Harris here with us from the bobsled team and he was telling us how when they first started, nobody took it seriously, but it’s been different for us,” Sandra Lord, a key strategist for the venture, told The Gleaner. “When we talk about this with people, everyone’s been so supportive of us. They remember the bobsled team and they have been so encouraging, we have support that has been beyond our expectations.”

The team already has an endorsement from the Jamaican Olympic Association and reportedly has the financial backing from a throng of donors to reach its estimated functioning budget of $1.7 million, a crucial hurdle leaped for a country struggling financially.

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With Toronto being in the American League and the only team from Canada in Major League Baseball, players on National League squads rarely get an opportunity to travel north of the border during the regular season. This weekend, the Mets are visiting the Blue Jays. Terry Collins and company wanted to make the most of traveling to hockey country, so the team decided to wear NHL jerseys of their choice.

“We like to have some fun in New York and for me the Stanley Cup Playoffs are the ultimate of the hockey season,” Collins explained. “We’ve got a lot of hockey fans on our club and in spring training we talked about taking theme trips. One of the guys said ‘Hey let’s take a hockey trip when we go to Canada.’ I told all the players to pick a team and we went to the NHL store and got the jerseys. You’ll see a variety of jerseys when they get off that bus.”

The team indeed brought a variety, including a Whalers jersey from Jason Bay. Bay, who is from Canada, said he grew up a Canucks fan but wanted to do something throwback. Somebody had to be that guy. The Mets have a long way to go if they want to catch up to the Rays and their crazy jackets or classy sweaters, but the hockey theme is a nice place to start.

H/T Eye on Hockey

The Devils evened their Eastern Conference Finals series against the Rangers with a 3-2 win in Game 2 on Wednesday. Martin Brodeur allowed two goals for the second straight game, and he was particularly irked about the first goal he allowed in Game 2 — one that was scored thanks to a rebound off the boards.

“It’s a tough place to play,” he said of Madison Square Garden after the game. “There’s so many bad bounces. The ice is not good, the boards are awful and the glass makes crazy bounces everywhere. In the second period I think two or three just went right in front of my net. So mentally it’s a tough game to play because you really have to look at the puck all game long.”

Even though Marc Staal’s goal bothered him, he was happy just to have the win.

“But I feel pretty good whenever I win. Doesn’t matter how I play, I feel good.”

Below is a video of the goal in question:

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If you’re a Rangers fan living in the New York area and you can’t find a ride to New Jersey to catch Game 3 on Saturday, you need new friends. The joy of a subway playoff series is that, well, the home arenas for both teams are just a short train or car ride away. Transportation to all seven potential games is made easy, and airline travel is taken out of the equation. Unless it’s put back into the equation, which is exactly what Delta Airlines has decided to do.

By filling out a quick form on the Rangers website, Rangers fans can enter to win a plane ticket to the Prudential Center to watch the visiting team square off against the Devils. The flight will leave Laguardia Airport at 10 a.m. Saturday morning and arrive at Newark Airport roughly 17 minutes later. Ground transportation to and from the airport is also included along with gifts and prizes. According to CBS New York, Rangers legends Rod Gilbert and Ron Duguay will also be on board, so lucky fans might even get the chance to say “hello” to them before the 17 minutes are up.

Fans have until 5 p.m. ET to fill out the form for a chance to take part in the unique experience. Assuming these fans have to go through airport security, is it even worth it? What happens if the flight is delayed or there’s bad weather? I’d have to be in a real bind to want to go through that hassle for a 17-minute flight. Plus, my ears hurt on the descent.

H/T Puck Daddy
Photo credit: Ed Mulholland-US PRESSWIRE

It’s exciting times for Los Angeles with the city’s sports teams advancing deep into the playoffs. Unfortunately, one local news outlet killed some of the buzz with an embarrassing mistake.

NBC Los Angeles did a story about the Clippers, Lakers, and Kings all involved in playoff series at the same time, but they used the wrong Kings logo. Yup, they used a logo for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings instead of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings. Their error was called out by the hockey team’s official Twitter account.

I’d talk about how shameful and embarrassing the mistake is if we hadn’t already seen this before. At least they apologized to the Kings for the error and admitted they were “red-faced” over the blunder.

Picture via Missak Tokhmanian, H/T Beto Duran

The following week will be one of the most exciting for the LA-area since the Lakers, Clippers, and Kings began playing at Staples Center in 1999. All three teams are in advanced rounds of the playoffs and all three are the road teams in their respective series. The Clippers face the Spurs in the Western Conference semifinals, and the Lakers take on the Thunder in the other semifinal. The Kings are the road team in their Western Conference finals series against the Coyotes. The busy times prompted conversations with my father and uncle about the matter, and we wondered how Staples Center would organize things with events on the same day.

Below is a look at the Staples Center schedule for the next week and a half. There will be double-headers each day next weekend, including an ice-to-hardwood conversion on Sunday.

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