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FREEWAY FARCE: Week 22

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FreewayFarce900

 

WEEK 22 (Mar 10 – Mar 16)

Los Angeles Kings (38-24-6)

GIF That Best Represents the Past Week for the LA Kings:

BS

So on Saturday night, the Kings played the Ducks, and it turned out this wasn’t a goal:

Goaltender Interference 2nd angle Kings Ducks - The Royal Half

Goaltender Interference Kings Ducks - The Royal Half

And Kings fans on twitter had a hard time accepting that, as demonstrated in King Tufficult’s game recap:

 

BLOGGER BEEF!!!!:

Saturday night also brought us one of the most entertaining Blogger Beefs of the year:

Ugh … no, not that one. That is barely a beef. That’s a spat, at best. And the one I was thinking of was a bit more one-sided:

 

More @frozenroyalty:

In honor of that super confusing back and forth, it seemed like a good time to take a look at just what is going on with the Frozen Royalty Twitter account. Here are some highlights from the week:

Heyyyyyyy-oooooo … wait, isn’t that what he just said?

No truth to the rumor that every writer covering the Kings is contractually obligated to use the “No truth to the rumor … ” joke constantly.

And then he used the term “sucker punch” a lot. Like a lot-a lot:

Wait, what does “‘punching an unsuspecting opponent” mean? Can somebody translate?

Oh thanks!

And then he referred to Jordan Nolan’s “nuts”  … 

… and continued to make us all uncomfortable:

Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 8.59.30 PM

And to top it all off, he was the subject of one of the best accidental  auto-focuses ever:

350x352.jpeg

A voting member of the PHWA, everybody!

 

Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (45-16-7)

GIF That Best Represents the Past Week for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim:

omar

Ducks feeling good again, after a couple big wins. 

 

The Worst of the Worst from @ducksfanzone:

 You may be shocked to learn that DFZ had some very strong opinions about the Ducks-Kings game this week:

I don’t know. More than he has now?

I’m all for finding narratives over the course of a season, but this is really grasping at straws. 

That was actually insightful analysis of what was happening in the game, but true to form, he ruined it when he HAD to throw in a complaint about the refs. If he has that much of an issue with the refs missing little calls like that, I’m sure he’d be sympathetic if a team were screwed by a much more egregious call, at a crucial point in the game.

Let’s find out!

First for context, here is Jen Neale, who is a Ducks fan and a writer for Puck Daddy, reacting to the disallowed goal in Saturday night’s game:

Don’t you ever underestimate DFZ.

And then some idiot fans did what idiot fans do and threw stuff on the ice.

PEOPLE ACTUALLY STILL SAY “STAY CLASSY”!?!?!?!

According to the Director of Publications and New Media for the Anaheim Ducks, YES!

Trying to grab the moral high ground when a segment of an opposing fan base does something idiotic is really one of the most short-sighted and hypocritical things that fans often do.

Let’s clear this up now. No fan base is above throwing trash on the ice. No fan base is above booing an injured player. No fan base is above violence amongst fans. You know why? Because every fan base has a segment made up of idiots.

Need proof?

See? We are all equally awful.

While scrolling through DFZ’s tweets from this game, I discovered something shocking … a Ducks fan who is worse at Twitter than DFZ. See if you notice a trend in these tweets:

Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 5.04.15 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 5.03.51 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 5.03.35 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 5.03.13 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 5.02.52 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 5.01.51 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 5.01.13 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 5.00.53 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 5.00.20 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 4.59.55 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 4.59.28 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 4.58.08 PM Screen Shot 2014-03-16 at 4.57.52 PM

I’m really not sure what @mrswans is trying to accomplish by manually RTing and adding #BeatLA, but you should also know that what I included there was LESS THAN HALF of what she actually tweeted during Saturday’s game.

 

Well, this was only a matter of time:

Teemu Selanne said this to Curtis Zupke:

“It’s a totally different situation when you play [on the] first line and big minutes,” Selanne said. “It’s hard when you don’t play those. You can’t really expect much.”

Bruce Boudreau responded with this:

“It’s been four games and it’s decreased by 12 seconds,” and pointed out Anaheim hasn’t been on the power play much since the break.

Thomas Drance took a look at what may have caused this discrepancy over ice time.

Selanne has only managed 20 points in 50 games this season, and is averaging under 14 minutes per contest. The MVP of the men’s Olympic hockey tournament has seen his ice time dip even more significantly since his return from Sochi.

The future Hockey Hall of Famer has played with the Ducks’ second unit power-play, but at even-strength he’s played fourth-line minutes against the bottom-end of opponent’s rosters. Selanne still appears to have a modest positive impact on Anaheim’s puck possession metrics, but his offensive struggles aren’t solely the product of limited ice-time.

Selanne’s even-strength shot rate – he’s averaging only five shots per sixty minutes of even-strength ice-time – ranks dead last among Ducks regular forwards. Of the 295 NHL forwards who have logged at least 500 minutes at even-strength, Selanne is generating shots on goal at a rate that would rank him 261st.

Perhaps the Ducks are resting Selanne for the postseason, or perhaps his limited run of late reflects his flagging effectiveness. Time comes for us all.

Either in an effort by Boudreau to appease, or an effort to spark their suddenly struggling offense, Selanne found himself on the top line by the next game. This should be an interesting dynamic for the Ducks down the stretch.

SHOOTOUT: WHO WON THE WEEK?

First Round, In-game GIF of the Week:

Kings:  

Dustin Brown is all:

ALEXANDER_TERRIBLE_HORRIBLE

Ducks:

perryglass

If Corey Perry made you laugh, it confirms just how hate-able Patrick Roy has made the Avs.

Winner: WOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Anze-Kopitar-screaming-celebration-The-Royal-Half

ric-flair-blood

Second Round, War of Words:

Kings: Darryl Sutter via lakingsinsider.com

On Jim Fox Legends Night:
I think that we do it three or four times a year, and I think the players are pretty familiar with Jim Foxy. He holds us up a lot, actually, getting on the airplane. He’ll hold us up tonight, too.

…

[Reporter: So did you tell Jim not to speak too long?]…Surely he won’t. I mean, he gets to say all he wants all the time. Right? It’ll be good for his family.

There needs to be a designated font to let us know when Darryl Sutter is actually joking, because I’m not totally sure here.

Ducks:

Andrew Cogliano, via latimes.com

“Every guy in the room should be completely embarrassed of how they played tonight,” Ducks forward Andrew Cogliano said. “To start one of the biggest road trips, to have a division rival chasing you down and have a ton on the line … no one played at all. It’s unexplainable.”

“You really have to look in the mirror,” Cogliano said after the Ducks gave up two short-handed goals. “If you don’t, it’s going to get bad in a hurry.

“We have guys who know how to play. We did it all year, been in first place for a long time. We have Olympic champions, guys that have won Stanley Cups, young guys who’ve played great all year. To do this is not right.”

It’s great to see that fire from Andrew Cogliano. Meanwhile Teemu is complaining about his minutes, and not playing in the second half of back-to-backs.

Winner: Bruce Broudreau says “Chill out bros.”

 Who is going to be the one to tell Darryl Sutter to not get so wound up? 

Sutter-Pissed-at-Ref-Ducks-The-Royal-Half

Third Round, Video Highlight of the Week:

Kings:

gabbo

Ducks:

Coming off their worst loss of the season in Calgary, and down 2-1 in the second against Colorado, the Ducks season seemed to be spiraling out of control … and then they scored six goals in the period.

Winner: The Return of Top Titty

 

WINNER OF THE WEEK: Kings bloggers crashing the main stream media

Oh that’s cute, but Jon Rosen talked about Pumpernicholl‘s penalty plus-minus stat on TELEVISION, SO IN YOUR FACE JEWELS FROM THE CROWN.

A rambling man, Hrudey can't be tied to any one team. But because he's too cheap for NHL Gamecenter, his NHL universe consists only of Ducks and Kings broadcasts. What he lacks in knowledge of the actual sport of hockey, he makes up for in snark and pop culture references. You can follow Hrudey Can't Fail on Twitter @HrudeyCantFail.
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