Opening Night Roster

With the season opener just days away, the Kings announced their roster for Saturday's season/home opener against Phoenix. There are no major surprises.

Kings Hire Beat Writer Hammond

The Kings on Wednesday hired Kings Daily News beat writer Rich Hammond for the same role with the team's official website. Hammond spent the last 10 years with the newspaper covering the Kings in numerous aspects, including the "Inside the Kings" blog, which consistently ranked as the top pro sports blog on the paper's website.

Hammond had this to say on his Daily News Kings blog just after the announcement was made.

In reaction to this, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had this to say about the move.

At first, I wasn't sure why Cuban had not only responded to this kind of news, but why he responded the way he did. But after thinking about his background, and all of his endeavors as a businessman, it dawned on me that this sort of hiring is right up his alley.

A quick background: Cuban completely revolutionized television viewing and the industry as we see it today. He launched the first-ever high-definition channel for DirecTV in 2001. His HDNet now includes several different high-definition networks, and today, nearly every major network and cable network broadcasts in digital high-definition.

Cuban is also an avid and active investor in leading and cutting-edge technology. He uses his blog as a forum to share his thoughts and ideas on topics such as politics, entrepreneurship, as well as technology.

So how does this all tie in to the Kings hiring Hammond? Well, the newspaper as we know it is a dying breed. We've already seen the Daily News alone lose two of its top beat writers in Hammond, and former Dodger beat writer, Tony Jackson, because of the sign of the times. While the internet is now the number one source for the general public to get its daily news, papers such as the Daily News are starting to struggle to hang on to its precious insiders because of cost-cutting, including those like Hammond, who use their blogs as an avenue to give us information as they see and hear it without having to have their thoughts regulated by the powers that may be.

So the Kings hiring of Hammond to do just that makes perfect sense. Hammond will be able to provide the fans inside information directly from the team. And in the future, we'll probably see many more teams begin to hire beat writers like Hammond, not just in the NHL, but in all of the major sports.

NHL Realignment Plans?

With the current messes that are the Phoenix Coyotes and New York Islanders, the big Four-Letter Sports Network that is partially responsible for the NHL receiving very little national exposure since the strike five years ago decided it would be fun to have four of its hockey-thumpers play NHL Commissioner and offer up some ideas for realignment in the NHL.

Here are some of idea highlights:

• John Buccigross adds 10 new teams in smaller markets, including adding another team in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, as well as another in the Toronto area) without dumping or or relocating any of the current 30 teams, and splits the league up into two monster conferences (the Gretzky Conference and the Orr Conference) with no divisions. His idea is simple: to have an aggressive shared-revenue system that could create more total revenue than the current system.
• Scott Burnside offers a simple plan, as well. He suggests not eliminating the Coyotes altogether, but rather have them as a roving, nomad-ish kind of franchise. They'll play in whatever city can sellout at least two games. He, too, offers adding another team in the Toronto area. His realignment also eliminates the Panthers since no one cares about them in Miami, or anywhere else. And his divisions are basically the same other than renaming them with corporate sponsors (Atlantic: Shales Cafe; Northeast: Upfront; Southeast: Flying Saucer; Pacific: Paul's Cocktail; Central: Rossi's; Northwest: Sherlocks) and moving one or two teams around.
• Pierre LeBrun's realignment has the most changes, and might be the most far-fetch idea of the four. He's eliminated eight current teams and relocated five of them overseas to Europe. The eight eliminated: Phoenix, Tampa, Atlanta, Florida, Carolina, Nashville, Long Island and yes, Jersey. The five new Euro-teams: Prague, Stockholm, Moscow, Helsinki and Cologne. He's also added another team in Toronto courtesy of the Islanders, moved the Coyotes back to Winnipeg and added a team in Seattle. The conferences have been renamed back to Wales and Campbell, and four of the six divisions have the old names back, as well: Adams, Patrick, Norris and Smythe. The last two divisions would be Salming (the European teams) and (Jack Kent) Cooke (the current Pacific Division with Phoenix substituted for Seattle).
• Barry Melrose's idea is the most simplest idea of them all. The Mullet has relocated three teams (Phoenix, Atlanta and Florida) to Toronto, Saskatoon and Portland. He's left everything else unchanged.

And just for the sake of this post, I have a plan, as well. I would take bits and pieces of the four ideas above to come up with my own new NHL.

As much as I like the idea of Euro-teams, the travel would be brutal, thus making that idea almost impossible. So instead of five Euro-teams, I would relocate six teams: Phoenix, Atlanta, Florida, Tampa, Carolina and the Islanders. Three of them go to Canada (Coyotes back to Winnipeg, the Islanders become Toronto's second team and one team goes to Saskatoon in Central Canada), one goes to Milwaukee, one goes to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area as a second team there and the last heads to Seattle or Portland on the west coast.

I like the idea of renaming the conferences and divisions back to the way it was before they went to six divisions. The Wales Conference would house the old Patrick (NY, NJ, Philly, Boston and Washington) and Adams (Pittsburgh, Columbus, Nashville, Milwaukee and St. Paul) divisions and add the Gretzky (Montreal, the two Toronto teams, Ottawa and Buffalo) division, while the Campbell Conference gets the old Norris (Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Minnesota and Colorado) and Smythe (Vancouver, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatoon) divisions while adding the Cooke (LA, Anaheim, San Jose, Dallas and Seattle/Portland) division.

O'Donnell Suspended Five Games

Defenseman Sean O'Donnell has been suspended for the final three pre-season games and the first two regular season games by the NHL for his cross-check on the Islanders' Matt Martin in K.C. two nights ago during a pre-season match-up. O'Donnell received a match penalty during the game for his hit on Martin.

Gretzky Quits

The drama that is the Phoenix Coyotes has taken another turn. Wayne Gretzky, who had yet to report to training camp in light of his contract status due to the organization's financial woes and ownership situation, has finally stepped down as head coach. Former Kings assistant and Dallas head coach Dave Tippet is expected to replace him.

Heatley Finally Traded

These Dany Heatley trade reports are taking on its own life now. Word now from TSN and ESPN is Heatley has indeed been traded to San Jose, but not as part of a three-way deal with the Kings, and not involving Patrick Marleau. Heatley reportedly has been traded, along with a fifth round pick, for LW Jonathan Cheechoo, RW Milan Michalek and a second round draft pick. Here is TSN.ca's report.

BREAKING..................??

Update (10:10 PM CT): How about another link. This one has a little more to the story in that it breaks down how ESPN seems to be ahead of the game in reporting deals and whatnot of late.

Not to say this is dead or alive, but something about this Puck Daddy story tells me there's more to this than we know, and that this one is far from over as I mentioned an hour ago.

In other words, there's still tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

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Update (9:15 PM CT): Kings GM Dean Lombardi, as well as Ottawa GM Brian Burke and San Jose GM Doug Wilson, has denied this trade. In a two-word text back to ESPN and to the Daily News' Rich Hammond, Lombardi says the deal is "complete bull".

So much for that!

The deal didn't make any sense from the Kings standpoint anyway.

Stay tuned. We probably haven't heard the last of this one.

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UPDATE (8:06 PM CT): Here's ESPN's link to the trade. Still no confirmation from any of the teams.

Talk of this deal was reported yesterday by The Fourth Period.

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ESPN's John Buccigross is reporting a blockbuster three-team trade that sends Dany Heatley to San Jose, Patrick Marleau to the Kings, and Alexander Frolov and Jarrett Stoll to Ottawa.

More on this as information becomes available.