Thursday night at Staples Center was not just a night of the 2nd time this season that the Kings have put together a winning streak of 3 games or more. It was also the night Jack Johnson (in his second season with the Kings & in the NHL) returned to Staples Center ice. He’s been around, but he’s been working on rehabilitating his shoulder. It was great to see him play in person again. Kings fans who hadn’t traveled with the Kings to see them in Dallas, Minnesota, or Colorado hadn’t seen Johnson play in person since the second game of the season (at the Kings’ home opener against San Jose on October 12th). Johnson was injured in that game, had surgery on his shoulder, and was able to return earlier than expected against Dallas on January 17th.

Many Kings fans will notice that Johnson has bulked up a bit this season. Jack says he put on a good 20 pounds and one of his biggest concerns while putting on the weight this past summer was to make sure that he didn’t lose any of his good foot work and speed. Clearly, he did a good job working on that, since he still has maintained his speed while adding muscle to give him more confidence when facing big players along the boards.

Obviously, Jack is glad to be back in the lineup and playing hockey again with his team. He said he felt like he was back up to speed after the first period in Dallas. He got right back into the swing of things. Johnson wasn’t relaxing this year while his teammates were playing hockey. His rehabilitation was definitely hard work and he seems to have managed to stay in hockey shape, which is pretty impressive given his surgery.

Johnson says the biggest difference between the Jack Johnson of this season and the Jack Johnson of last season is his confidence. He’s a year older and much more confident. Jack had let his confidence slip a bit during his first full year in the NHL, but he’s back to his normal confident self and ready to play. At a time when many players are starting to feel a bit drained, Jack Johnson has a lot of excited energy and is eager to play more games.

Unfortunately, due to the Kings’ schedule (with even more end of the season road games than usual, probably due to the ice skating world championships taking place in Staples Center this year), LA fans only have 11 home games remaining this season to see Jack Johnson play live (unless they somehow manage to sneak into the playoffs). Hopefully, Jack will be healthy all next season.

I know there is a lot of debate about the idea of mascots not fitting in with the hockey world, etc. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed NHL mascots. Perhaps that’s because Iceburgh (the mascot of the Penguins, my first NHL team) is so entertaining. The way he plays around is fun to watch and he doesn’t disrupt the game at all, so I don’t understand the harm. Depending on the counts you use and what you count as a mascot, 24 (or 25) of the 30 NHL teams have mascots. If you haven’t been lucky enough to see all of them, you can click here to see pictures of all 24 mascots. Four of the original six teams have mascots, including the Canadiens and Maple Leafs. Since most of the arguments I’ve heard about hockey not being a place for mascots say that they take their hockey more seriously in Canada, I find it interesting that the two original six teams from Canada, as well as the Vancouver Canucks, Ottawa Senators, & Calgary Flames have team mascots. This makes the Edmonton Oilers the only team in Canada without a mascot. Clearly it’s not simply an issue with being serious about hockey. Mascots entertain kids and older fans when they’re not overly intrusive and distracting. If used properly, I think a good mascot can add to the experience of a great night of hockey.

The video my sister posted today on her Facebook page made me think about this. If you want to see a hilarious campaign video for Iceburgh, check this out:

The Kings went into the All-Star break by getting 5 out of the possible 6 points in their three game road trip, which ended in the mile high city last night as they won their first back-to-back games on consecutive days in over a year (the last time was December 29 & 30, 2007 in Colorado and Chicago). The last time the Kings were in Colorado, the Avalanche beat them 6-1, going ahead 6-0 before Oscar Moller would score the only Kings goal more than half-way through the game. I’m sure the Kings were thinking of that as they faced the Avalanche last night and it seemed to help them get off to a good start. The Kings scored the first goal just 2:14 into the game and started off the 2nd period strong after allowing the Avalanche to tie the game 7:40 into the 1st. Though Kings fans were certainly worried as they watched the Kings give up 3 goals, allowing their 4 goal lead to drop to 1, they had to be happy to see their team hang on to their lead and go home for the All-Star break on a high note.

Since the world figure skating championships are being held at Staples Center in addition to the Grammy Awards, Lakers & Clippers games, and other normal events, the Kings face more away games than their usual high number after the All-Star break. Many have said they think the large number of away games will hurt the young team and they’ll end up at the bottom of the heap. I actually think the time to bond might help the young team and they’ll continue to do better than they did last year (they’re now 13th instead of 15th in the conference and 23rd instead of 29th in the league). I guess we’ll all find out after the All-Star break. At least the Kings and their fans can enjoy watching Drew Doughty in the Young Stars game and their captain Dustin Brown in his first NHL All-Star game thinking of their team ending on a positive note before the break.

Remember that the Kings’ first game after the All-Star break (on Thursday, January 29th against the Chicago Blackhawks) is not being televised on FSN West, so if you want to see that game outside of Staples Center you’ll need access to the Center Ice package to get WGN’s HD coverage of the game.

The Lightning may have only won 13 games this season (fewer than any team in the Western Conference) and be ranked 12th in the Eastern Conference, but they’ve done well in southern California. They beat the Ducks 4-3 Friday night and beat the Kings 3-1 last night. In last night’s game, the Lightning scored two goals in 41 seconds at the end of the 1st period to give them a 2-0 lead. They went ahead 3-0 at 5:48 when Vincent Lecavalier scored his 17th goal of the season. At that point, Murray did what I would have done at the beginning of the 2nd period – he put Jonathan Quick in goal. Though Quick stopped all 15 shots he faced, the damage had been done and the Kings only scored one goal against Lightning goaltender Mike Smith.

Ryan Malone scored goals 98 and 99 of his NHL career on Friday in Anaheim, but didn’t get the hat trick in Anaheim or a goal in LA, so he’s still in search of his 100th goal. Maybe he’ll get that in San Jose on Wednesday.

This was only the second game I’ve seen Stamkos play live. I’ve watched the Lightning quite a bit on TV (to see Stamkos, the ex-Penguins on the roster, and to see if they’re going to perform pretty much as I expected this year – horribly), but I’ve only seen Stamkos play in two games live. Unfortunately, he did not play against Anaheim (he was benched due to the new conditioning program he’s doing). From what I’ve seen, it really doesn’t seem like he was ready for the NHL yet. It seems that he was rushed and pushed to be ready, since he was the number one draft pick. Perhaps they should have done what the Ducks did with Bobby Ryan (selected 2nd behind Sidney Crosby in the 2005 NHL Entry Draft). Ryan had played in a couple NHL games, but was essentially kept in the minor leagues until November 16, 2008. Since then, Ryan has had a couple games where he didn’t look great, but has been amazing overall. Ryan’s got 26 points in 26 games (putting him in 4th place for all NHL rookies in points, though he’s played 10+ games fewer than the top 3 rookies). He’s also scored a hat trick, has a +/- rating of 11, & has 32 hits. Stamkos (who has played in 41 of the Lightning’s 42 games) has only 15 points (tying him for 14th among rookies).

Clearly, the Ducks are a better team than the Lightning, which many will argue helps Ryan. Stamkos doesn’t measure up when compared with comparable team. The Blues have one fewer point than the Lightning (and have played one less game). Patrick Berglund of the Blues is tied for 2nd among rookies with 27 points in 36 of the Blues’ 41 games. Though I haven’t seen Stamkos play enough in person and television coverage can’t show you everyone on the ice most of the time, I still think it’s possible that he was rushed into the NHL and might have done better as a rookie in the 2009-10 season.

Oddly enough, I’ve seen the Lightning play in 3 games live (against the Penguins in December and their two games in southern California this month). They’ve got a perfect record when I’m in the building. Perhaps I should ask them if they’d like to take me to some of the arenas around the league I haven’t seen yet.

Jonathan Quick has been performing amazingly well since he was called up from Manchester when Erik Ersberg got injured and seems to have a permanent spot on the Kings’ roster, since they traded Jason LaBarbera to Vancouver. Tonight’s game against the Flyers led Quick to his first NHL overtime and shootout, where he shut out the Flyers. Of course, it was also helpful that the Kings (who haven’t been performing well in the shootout this season) scored two goals in the shootout. Terry Murray’s strategy in the shootout has always been to shoot first in the hopes of scoring and putting pressure on the competition. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been working that way for Murray until O’Sullivan scored leading off the shootout for the Kings. Apparently, when scoring on the first try, Murray’s approach works. Kopitar missed his shooutout attempt and Dustin Brown scored ending the shooutout before the Flyers’ third shooter.

With 31 saves (33 counting the shootout) and a save percentage of 96.9%, Quick earned the first star of the game and is listed as ESPN’s 3rd star of the day. Though Ersberg is healthy now, he remained on the bench due to the great performances Quick has been giving. I’m sure Ersberg will be in goal again for the Kings, since I can’t imagine Terry Murray not giving him another chance after his injury, but long stretches of starts have been common this season for all three of the Kings’ goaltenders.

The Flyers only had 3 power play chances today, but were held without a power play goal. After only scoring one last night, Philadelphia definitely didn’t look like the number 2 power play in the country when visiting southern California this season. The Kings did score a power play goal in one of their 6 chances against the Flyers, which means they had one more power play goal than the Flyers, just like the Ducks last night.

On the bright side for the Flyers, they went into tonight’s game tied in points with the Rangers (though still ahead of them for the Atlantic division lead because of playing fewer games) and came out of it as the sole division leader and third in the eastern conference. The Kings also moved up in the standings (to 12th from 14th in the west and back into 4th in the Pacific.

The Staples Center announced attendance tonight was a sellout of 18,118. It didn’t break any records or include any SRO tickets and there were many empty seats, but most of the empty seats were in the PR section & the suites (sold out for every sporting event in Staples Center). Clearly, the Flyers are a huge draw in southern California.

Though this year’s Winter Classic game didn’t have the snow or the shootout ending with the golden boy of the NHL scoring the game-winning shootout goal (or even a game close enough to make one think that it might go into overtime), the Winter Classic was a great game to watch.

I didn’t think the Red Wings would take a 3 goal lead (or hold it for over 16 minutes), but I think it was wonderful that the Blackhawks didn’t give up. The fact that they scored a goal with only 10 seconds remaining in the game made this year’s Winter Classic a lot more exciting than it looked at the beginning of the 3rd period. The Winter Classic is a great way to showcase the NHL and get those who don’t typically watch hockey to pay attention to the sport.

I wasn’t a big fan of the idea when I first heard of the Winter Classic, but they won me over. I now love the idea of an annual outdoor game. I’ll always be bummed that I didn’t go to the first Winter Classic game when the Penguins beat the Sabres in a shootout. Of course, the blizzard-like conditions in the game reminded me of why I decided (after marching at a Buffalo Bills game with the Penn State Blue Band in the winter when they had to plow the field before halftime) never to return to Buffalo in the winter. I need to see a Sabres game sometime to get to all the arenas, but I think a spring game would make more sense.

Another city I never like visiting in the winter is Chicago, but when it took me almost 2 days to get from Pittsburgh to Las Vegas this week, I was actually in three NHL cities (Philadelphia, Chicago, and Phoenix) without attending a single game (or even looking to see if the teams were in town). I stayed overnight in Philadelphia and Chicago, but couldn’t have gotten to a game. Chicago is still on my list of places I need to see an NHL game, but there will be plenty of time to get there.

As a Penn State fan, naturally the Rose Bowl was very disappointing, but it was good to see Penn State come back some in the 4th quarter and score more points against USC in the 4th quarter than any other team this season. USC had actually shut out 8 of the teams they played this season for the 4th quarter, so Penn State’s 17 points (10 more than any other team had managed to score against USC in the 4th quarter) was impressive. I’m sure they were disappointed that they didn’t get that extra touchdown at the end, but they played a good game for the most part. If it weren’t for the breakdown in the 2nd quarter, the game would have been a lot more exciting for everyone watching. I thought the Rose Bowl would be one of the closest bowl games this year, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. Hopefully, the national championship game will be an exciting game to watch.

It was also disappointing not to see Joe Paterno running out on the field with the team. I really thought that unless he was in a wheelchair he would run out there – no matter how much it might hurt his hip at the moment – and be on the sidelines with his team for the Rose Bowl. He must have really been in a lot of pain to stay in the press box for the Rose Bowl.