Game 31: Kings 2, Flames 1

Much has been said about the Kings and their supposed rivalries with teams like the Ducks, Red Wings and Oilers. I would like to add the Calgary Flames for consideration as strong rivals.

The Kings haven't beaten the Flames since before my son was born. And if that doesn't seem like a long time to you, lemme put it another way. The amount of diapers I have changed in the past year makes it feel like we haven't beaten Calgary since 1996. In fact, the Kings' recent performance against the Flames is oddly reminiscent of loaded Pampers.

But that's all changed now that we have Scott Mother Lovin' Parse! Seriously, I doubt a lot of love will be given to No. 63 by the national media for his acrobatic shot that deked Miikka Kiprusoff out of his jock and dazzled the crowd. The only thing that was wrong with his shot was the camera angle. Skating away from the corner with the camera, getting blocked by the ref, facing away from the camera. This is Hockeywood, Scotty. Love the camera! You need to work on your on-screen presence, dude.

You would think that there were no other photos taken last night. I could've used a number of decent pictures as my main shot, like Jarret Stoll tallying the game-winner. But I decided on the obligatory one of SuperParse flying through the air. I also could have used one of Jonny (Don't Call Me Jonathon) Quick, who was a monster. In fact, I might just have to give Quick the moniker of Iron Man, because the dude's a workhorse. There's a stretch of 11 games coming up where coach Terry Murray might have to give Ersberg a chance to scrape the splinters out of his butt.

"Seven games in 11 days is a lot of work for one guy," Kings coach Terry Murray said, "so I'm prepared to make a change. I don't want to push it too far, with a compressed schedule, but on the other side, Ersberg has been better. He's working hard."

Allow me to translate, since I talk Murray. "Quicker's has played 11 games in a row for us, and I'm gonna keep running him out there every game on the roadie. I will give Quicker a Christmas gift and let Ersberg get one start against the Oilers. It's the least I can do, and will allow me to give Quicker ample time to recoop for the stretch run."

Speaking of diapers, look who's back with the club? That's right, everyone's favorite huggable Swedish player, Oscar Moller, is back. He played mostly on the fourth line with Brad Richardson and Raitis Ivanans. Seriously, Moller and Ivanans together looks like Max and Carol from Where the Wild Things Are. Turns out, Moller will stick with the club "at least for a while," according to Dean Lombardi, via Rich "The News Hound" Hammond. Moller did sport a nifty-looking beard, which made him look 17.

Also back with the Kings is their Scud Missile, Rob Scuderi, who's been out with the dreaded "upper/lower/try to guess where injury" since before Thanksgiving. Scuds played primarily with Drew Doughty and was solid as usual. After the game, Scuderi broke it down as only a wily vet can.

"When you have a lead, I think it’s a case of not beating yourself," he said. "You don’t want to ever just sit back and wait for them to come at you. Starting to get the pucks deep, cycling down in their end and make them come 200 feet."

The Kings played beautiful defensive hockey, clamping down on Jarome Iginla, who lit them up for a hat trick the last time these two times played. The Kings only mustered a season-low 16 shots, but outhit the Flames. Stoll was masterful in the faceoff dots once again, and were able to shut out the Flames power play. The Kings are no longer at the bottom in PK percentage, so there's that.

So a solid win starting off the week makes the cold weather almost not matter. And by cold, I mean 50 degrees. Seriously, I want to buy one of these Rink Rat toques, available over at RiverCitySports.com. Wait, what's that? No Kings toque?!? There's a Duck one... Apparently, it never gets cold west of the 57 Freeway. Bah!

• AP: Quick is slick, Kings beat Flames 2-1

    When the Calgary Flames visited the Kings last month, Jarome Iginla bulled his way to a goal in every period. When the Flames returned to Los Angeles 16 days later, the Calgary captain was held scoreless. It’s not a bad measure of just how quickly the Kings are learning during their most promising season in several years.

• L.A. Times: Kings get ahead and, for once, stay there

    After squandering leads in three straight games the Kings made life a little easier for themselves Monday. Although they were outshot by Calgary in the third period, the Kings made a second-period goal by Jarret Stoll hold up for a 2-1 victory over the Flames at Staples Center.

• NHL.com: Quick leads Kings past Flames

    "It was a great team win," said Quick, who held the Flames off the scoreboard for the final 35 minutes. "Everyone battled all game long. It was a great two points against a real strong Calgary team. We've just got to keep this momentum going."

• LAKings.com: Stoll-en victory

    Entering Monday, the Kings had defeated the Flames just once in theirpast 12 meetings, and they seemingly faced long odds in ending thatskid, considering that Calgary has been rolling of late, particularlyon the road.

• L.A. Times: Local teams struggle to fill seats in poor economy

    The Kings' strong start has helped add 2,000 new season-ticket customers and bring their season ticket base to 11,500. But not everyone is convinced they're finally for real.

They said it

    "It’s huge. We know we haven’t been playing our best lately, but we’ve been getting wins. If you’re winning games and you’re getting points, you can’t be disappointed about any of that stuff. we’ve just got to keep racking up points at this stage of the year. They’re very important, especially against a team like that. They’re hard to play against." – Jarret Stoll, on holding on to beat Calgary

    “That’s a pretty special skill play. The confidence, the poise, to hold the puck and taking it to the net like that, it’s pretty courageous. On the other side, that penalty he took late in the game is something we’ll have to talk about later.” – Terry Murray on Parse's goal

Around the Kingdom

• The Royal Half: Flame retardant

    The LA Times might be worried about the lack of attendance at Kings' home games... but last night was the first game all season I felt like the arena was empty. I mean... a Monday night home game against a team from Calgary when it's close to freezing outside doesn't bring in the crowds? Bah! It sucks that more people weren't there last night because they missed the new space-aged Santa costumes on the Kings Ice Crew.

• The Throne Room: A huge character win

    Having seen the Kings’ inability to clear their own zone in times of need, heading to the third period with a 2-1 lead didn’t inspire a ton of confidence, but the Kings came out for the third period playing a simplified, tightened defensive game that helped to smother the Flames.

• HockeyBuzz's Matthew Barry: Eight Is The Magic Number as Kings Defeat Calgary 2-1

    ...The Kings power play, which had been a dismal 3 out of 28 since Ryan Smyth went down with an injury was cycling and shooting and shooting and shooting and that perseverance finally paid off as Jarret Stoll took a beautiful centering feed from Justin Williams to give the Kings a 2-1 lead which they held onto for the final 35 minutes. "That was as good as it gets" said Terry Murray following the game. "We're gonna try and build on that one".

• LAKingsNews.com: The playoffs come in December – Kings put out the Flames

    From the opening puck drop, this game had the feel of playoff hockey.  The Kings were aggressive and gave the Flames little room to operate in the defensive and neutral zones. The Flames responded by greedily guarding their own blue line against the Kings’ attack and kept pucks and Kings’ forwards to the outside.

• Examiner.com: PK Unit and Quick help Kings extinguish the Flames

    So how do you overcome (scoring slumps of Kopitar and Brown, loss of Smyth, the play of Iginla against L.A.) to post a 2-1 regulation victory, earning a point in their fifth straight game? It turns out that it takes several ingredients: the return of Rob Scuderi to the lineup after missing eight games; timely goal scoring by Scott Parse and Jarret Stoll; a penalty killing unit, maligned for portions of the season, shutting down all four Calgary power play attempts; and arguably the best performance of the season from goaltender Jonathan Quick.

• Inside Hockey: It was Quick

    Two points are two points, and the Kings now have as many as Calgary, 39.  But the Flames have two games in hand, and they had been on a tear, on the road at that, over the past ten games. 

From across the aisle, the Calgary viewpoint

• Calgary Herald: Offence missing in Flames loss to Kings

     No matter, the pride of Kalamazoo, sailing through the air Bobby Orr style, used his forehand to tuck the puck behind Miikka Kiprusoff at 8:54 of the first period.

• Calgary Sun: Extra zip goes missing

     Many aspects of their game was on the mark -- especially considering it's the last game of a long and arduous trip and they took a big hit on the blueline before puck drop -- but the Flames couldn't find that last bit to win for a fifth time on the journey.

• Matchsticks and Gasoline: Flames @ Kings Post-Game - Karma's a Bitch

    As sometimes happens, the Flames were the better team last night in just about all facets of the game, but ended up on the losing end of the score. Tough to be mad about it though - Calgary has been the beneficiary of similar fortunes recently so we'll just write this one off as the universe trying to balance itself out.

• Red Mile: Kings Send Flames Home With a Loss

    The Flames had plenty of chances to tie the game in the 2nd and 3rd periods but could not beat Quick. The young Kings goalie was "in the zone" tonight and seemed to get a pad on everything that came his way. Even when the Flames had 2 or 3 chances to whack at a rebound, he still managed to keep the puck out of the net.

Message board meltdown

• C of Red: GDT FLAMES (18-7-3) @ KINGS (17-10-3)

    FLAME111: The only teams I will accept a regulation loss against is the Sharks,the Hawks, the Devils, the Caps or the Penguins no other team in my view should be able to beat us. If they do there is a problem somewhere on our team that needs to be addressed...
    iamcdn34:  The Kings are a good team and the Flames took them for granted.....no domination by the Flames in the third, alot of fire the puck and hope it hits the net or something. Can't win them all hopefully a quick rebound for Wednesday's game.
    bigchief: The Powerplay and the faceoff circle need work!! Hello!! Is anyone listening? Butter? Dutter?

• HFBoards: GDT Flames @ Kings

    StreakingRed: Yet another game where a PP goal would have gone a long way. Just ONE. We can't score ONE PP goal.
    soulj43r: Iginla was either not himself tonight or just got shutdown pretty good.
    outerone: Wheres that secondary scoring we were seeing at the start of the season, cmon guys!! pick it up. Iggy has also been shut down pretty well the last few games.

• Matchsticks and Gasoline: Flames @ Kings Gamethread

    d_p_h: Wtf is Jiokinen eating he looks like he’s a bear that’s been awoken after a long winters rest
         Kent Wilson: A big, dumb, powerful animal is probably a good comparison.
              walkinvisible: bear? anteater?
                   Robert Cleave: Rhinoceros? Nah, that's Dustin Penner. my bad.

• LetsGoKings: What they're saying

Peeping the dailies



<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=foxsports&vid=6e1bd286-b08c-48ae-aaa2-22fb01532d15" target="_new" title="Kings put out Flames">Video: Kings put out Flames</a>