To Shoot or Not to Shoot....

The Kings were back at Staples tonight after a couple days off and a quick road game in San Jose yesterday. As teams, San Jose and Vancouver don't have much in common, although the outcome of tonight's game remarkably mirrored our loss last night in San Jose - put out in a shoot-out.

I should have known I was asking for trouble when assuming this would be an easy win with Vancouver starting goalie Robert Luongo out with a cracked rib. Andrew Raycroft? Seriously? We will own this guy! Yeah, not so much. All the fun in tonight's game happened in the first period, with each team scoring a lone goal. The rest of the game was really pretty boring. Were we tired from battling perennial conference powerhouse San Jose the night before? Probably, but professional athletes don't get to make excuses, so fans shouldn't either. We out shot the Canucks 31-15, so to Raycroft's credit, he kept them in the game.

And when it came down to the tie breaking shoot-out, Raycroft brought the win. I really missed Sully tonight. For all the things he didn't do well sometimes, he was a shoot-out winner for us last year.

At least it was Halloween Night, so there was lots of entertainment to make up for the lack of action on the ice. After all, who doesn't love Pumpkin Bailey?



And my friend Mike Timoney, who is a member of the Kings Ice Crew, was brave enough to come to a hockey game in a skirt.



Most importantly, it was Fox Sports color commentator Heidi Anrol's birthday, so I made her a sign. The Fox camera guy tried to get me on camera, so I guess we'll see how that worked out when the post game show airs.



The night wasn't a total loss, since we earned a point in the Conference standings for getting the game to a shoot-out. Maybe a little Halloween celebration tomorrow will get the boys back in a winning frame of mind. Either that, or our next round of shooters need to do the deed in costume to freak out the opposing goalie... Mike, can you loan Kopi your kilt?