haroldsnepsts

I can't either, though I don't have a good reason. I guess he dives on occasion. I can see the goaltender interference one. Lewis ran Niemi pretty good. Not on purpose i don't think but he didn't seem to be aware how close he was. The hooking on Regehr I thought was a bit weak. He was hooking Wingels but Wingels was also holding Regehr's stick with his glove so part of it was him just trying to get his stick freed. Though the goalie interference was hard to take given the Sharks running Quick all night. Burns elbowed Quick in the head hard enough that it knocked him down and the refs blew the play dead, but didn't call a penalty. Quick was great all game. The Kings need to get their scoring going and stop taking stupid penalties.

This time refs giving the Sharks a 5 on 3 at the end of regulation. Could be a short OT.

Per player player? Or for the team?

I think leaving it to ref discretion would make it worse. Consider how they are with goaltender interference and generally using their discretion. Not letting players change lines like with icing seems like a good solution.

Stuart just Kronwalled Williams

Stuart with a bad giveaway that led to the Kings first goal. He's factored in a few of LA's goals now.

Ouch. Pierre LeBrun ‏@Real_ESPNLeBrun 3m NHL fines Sharks $100,000 for Doug Wilson's statement from yesterday

I think I posted that partway through the 2nd period? After how it worked out today, I need to make a habit of that from now on.

Ericsson was a solid D man last year too, it just took a while for people to get out of the habit of bashing him to actually notice. This year he's stepped up in a major way. I wouldn't have guessed he'd look this good on the top pairing.

On the NHL network they had a nice highlight reel of Zetterberg shutting down Toews. I used to be a Toews fan but man he's done a lot of falling down and whining to the refs when there's no penalty.

That was an awesome pass by Ericsson (just saw the replay again). He's deep in his own zone along the boards and hits Franzen on the tape.

Crawford is decent but not the biggest obstacle in beating the Hawks. He goes as the team goes, and they were not good today.

Great game by the Wings! Zetterberg was in full beast mode today. He made everyone around him better while shutting down Mr. Intangibles.

That's about the closest you'll see Kane get to backchecking. You can tell he isn't very good at it.

Toews out with no zetterberg. Actually yes. Watch the replay. He takes out the D man trying to get to Flip. Maybe Cleary and Flip together is a good thing. two negatives make a positive?

If he didn't get suspended for it, I'm highly in favor.

I guess Bab's was right saying when he wants to get a player going he puts them with Z. whew. good thing Abby had his head up. That hit was coming full speed from the blueline.

Flip! And I'd like to point out Flip was wide open because of Cleary cutting across and setting a pick.

Thank you Bolland. That was a really stupid penalty.

There's a profanity filter in place here. Let it do its job and do not circumvent it with alternate spellings or spaces. It'd be a silly reason to get suspended just because you want to use a bad word.

Nice finish by Mule. And what a stretch pass! Was that E or Kronner?

I can understand that and agree Cleary is being asked to play a role bigger than his ability at this point in his career. I'm guessing Babcock thinks that for what he lacks in his offensive abilities up there he makes up for with generally solid defensively play. With the younger guys you're probably gonna get better offensive chances but have more mistakes. Just a theory but seems to me the best explanation for Cleary's current usage.

Why are these two players even getting linked? Am I not allowed to criticize anyone's play but Cleary's?

Nice strawman. I'm not using Flip as a measuring stick for Cleary. Frankly the expectations for Flip should be higher. If we're talking about re-signing Cleary for next season, that's a different conversation. I'm not saying Cleary is a great player. Just that Cleary bashing has reached the level of sport here, in the same way it had about Ericsson and many other scapegoats before him.

No he hasn't. Flip was terrible against Anaheim minus that one play.