The Champs Turn The Page On The New Season
There were a few awe inducing moments as the Chicago Blackhawks took the ice on Wednesday night in their quest to defend their Stanley Cup title. Unfortunately, many of those moments came before the puck was dropped. The most important one came as they raised the banner to the rafters of the United Center in front of another sell out crowd.
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Once the puck dropped, the New York Rangers did everything they could to spoil the Hawks Parade, scoring early as Oscar Lindberg slipped one past Corey Crawford. About thirteen minutes later, Artemi Panarin introduced himself to Henrik Lundqvist with a blistering wrist shot set up by none other than Patrick Kane.
If we learned nothing from that, Lundqvist summed it up fairly well after the game as he spoke to the media.
“That line with Anisimov, Kane and that young guy (Panarin). I can’t pronounce his name, but they looked really good.” Lundqvist stated.
Odds are good every scout in the NHL is watching video of the young phenom who came over from Russia’s KHL, after his deke and dodge on the Dallas Stars last week. If they were not already, they will be after he floating a puck past the legendary Rangers netminder, Lundqvist. Panarin’s coming out party has officially started.
While the home team probably is not feeling too bad about the night as a whole, given the festivities, clearly they would have preferred a more favorable outcome. The Blackhawks fell to the Rangers 3-2, in spite of a last minute goal by Kane that was later disallowed due to the ref losing sight of the puck. A questionable call in the eyes of the Blackhawks and their fans, but it held nonetheless.
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The Beast From The East Did Not Bring His Best To The West
The Los Angeles Kings came out and scored on their first shot of the game against their division rival, the San Jose Sharks. But then the Sharks newly minted coach Peter DeBoer’s team put on a show.
Captain Joe Pavelski led the charge with a goal and two assists, and rookie Joonas Donskoi scored in his NHL Debut. Blueliner Brent Burns, and forward Joe Thornton also contributed with a goal and an assist each, and Tomas Hertl added a goal as well. Martin Jones had a top notch first outing in the crease with his new team, against his former team.
In fact, after the Kings opening goal, the Sharks were on the attack and they never relented as they dominated the Kings in a 5-1 rout.
However, the biggest storyline of the night did not come off of a goal, but rather a retaliatory hit by the Kings shiny new forward, Milan Lucic. Logan Couture had just left the penalty box when he upended the bruising ex-Bruin, and Lucic decided to raise the stakes as he roughly deposited Couture in his own bench.
Lucic was slapped with a match penalty, and will automatically sit out the Kings next game as he awaits a hearing, which could earn him a couple more games at the leagues discretion. This came with 1:19 left to play in the game, and turned an already bad outing into an embarrassment for the Kings. Certainly, they might have preferred Lucic introduce himself to the Western Conference in a more positive manner. Lucic, for his part, made no apologies and expects to return without further intervention from the league.
Dustin Brown may find himself in the hot seat as well, as he also had an open ice hit on Logan Couture. There was no call on the play, however Couture left the ice to address a cut from what appeared to be the helmet of Dustin Brown, as he drove into him and seemingly gave him a head butt to the face.
This match up was an all out slug fest when you look at the stat sheet; overall there were 20 penalties called in sixty minutes of play. That number is just shy of the total number of penalties taken by all six of the other teams in action on the night with 24.
These two teams match up again on October 22, and you can bet the bad blood will continue to boil as this old rivalry finds some new legs.
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