Kings News

Friday, June 12, 2009

Crawford Hired by Dallas; Pronger to L.A.?

First, the Chris Pronger reports.

There are unconfirmed rumors flying around the internet today that suggest the Kings are on the verge of acquiring Chris Pronger from the Ducks for Jack Johnson and the 5th overall pick in this year's draft next month. The rumor initiated on the website
HockeyBuzz and made its rounds through the internet. Some media outlets picked up on the initial report as a done deal but have retracted it since. The rumor is nowhere to be found on any of the major national hockey media outlets such as TSN.ca, or even ESPN.com.

Several sources, including Rich Hammond of the Daily News on his
Inside the Kings blog, have claimed to have received word from one team or the other that no deal is in place. Hammond says he received a "Rumor not true" text from Dean Lombardi himself. And granted Hammond broke the Patrick O'Sullivan-Justin Williams trade a day before it happened taht Lombardi denied at first, who's to say the trade won't still happen?

And for what it's worth, Pronger has said he has not been notified either.

However, one source says the two players are still likely to be traded as the teams try to haggle on the draft pick going from the Kings to the Ducks.

All that aside, I think this would be a ridiculously dumb move on the Kings part if they do anything close to it. I can't see the upside behind it when you're trying to build around the youth, and Jack Johnson is part of that youth movement. Obviously this would be a salary dump for the Ducks to get under the cap, but I don't understand it from the Kings side.

Either way, well done by both SoCal teams for stealing some of the thunder of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight in Detroit.

And lastly, former Kings head coach Marc Crawford was indeed hired as the Dallas Stars new head coach yesterday, a day after it was speculated they had called the Kings to ask for permission to talk to him after the Stars fired former Kings assistant Dave Tippett.

No comments: