Early on in the second period with the Bruins trailing, 1-0, Mark Stuart greeted Anze Kopitar at the Kings’ blue line with the night’s most jarring hit, slamming his shoulder into the chest of the Kings’ top-line center and dropping him to the ice just as Kopitar was taking a pass from defenseman Peter Harrold.

TD Garden, the lifeless house of snores and bores for the Bruins (losers of five straight on home ice), was finally crackling. Mark Stuart had smoked Anze Kopitar, Los Angeles’s best forward, then willingly dropped his mitts when Wayne Simmonds came knocking. The lifeless power play had broken through twice, with Marco Sturm and Mark Recchi doing the honors.

With the sale of the Bolts looming over the organization, trade rumors are starting to swirl across the league.

In our first two episodes of Puck Tracks, the music selections were awesome (Metallica, AC/DC). But for gritty hockey players like Wade Belak(notes) and Brooks Laich(notes), they were also a little predictable (Metallica and, uh, AC/DC).Which is why we're pleased to present Episode 3 of Puck Tracks: Season 1 featuring Matt Greene(notes), defenseman for the Los Angeles Kings and Hall & Oates fetishist.

I have been picking on Howard Berger a lot recently, but I won’t say much here. I think his words speak for themselves. September 30th, 2009 My own sense is that the Leafs will improve, but not quite enough to sneak into the playoffs.

January 27, 1984 On this day 26 years ago, Wayne Gretzky’s 51-game scoring streak with the Edmonton Oilers was halted.  The feat is still a modern day NHL record and, oddly enough, the streak was stopped by the Los Angeles Kings, who Gretzky was traded to four seasons later. While Gretzky’s totals that season are nothing short

Here are your Puck Previews: Spotlighting the key games in NHL action, news and views as well as general frivolity. Make sure to stop back here for the nightly Three Stars when the games are finished.

Although I’m sure Brian Burke wishes he could just push the “Sim to this date” button on this season, Toronto still has 29 games remaining on the schedule.  The first of their 17 remaining games at the ACC is tonight against the surging Los Angeles Kings, a franchise going in exactly the opposite direction as

from Mark Zwolinski of the Toronto Star, The Maple Leafs are on the verge of a fifth consecutive non-playoff season, and they have yet to draft a player over that span with the instant, high-level success that Drew Doughty will bring on Tuesday night when the Los Angeles Kings make a rare visit to Toronto.

This might be one of the strangest delays that I have ever seen happen in any professional sporting event.A unnamed Detroit Red Wings fan decided to scale the catwalk to watch the Los Angeles Kings-Detroit Red Wings affair.Here is more information on it from the Associated Press:An unidentified man was taken down from a conduit above a catwalk during a Detroit Red Wings game on Saturday night. Almost an entire section of stands in the lower bowl was cleared out when the man was noticed during…