Los Angeles Kings Hockey Team

Somehow, you wonder why King defenseman Marty McSorley even has a residence in Manhattan Beach. He is almost always in the Kings' dressing room. First to arrive, last to leave. Day turns to night and night turns to day before McSorley's rituals are completed in the dressing room of any arena. As former King general manager Rogie Vachon, upon completing a trade, would usually say: "And, he's good in the room."

Dwight King, aw-shucks personality and all, said there was a basic lesson he absorbed during six games with the Kings during the 2010-11 season. "You can't wait on the ice," King said. King didn't during a 4-2 victory over the Phoenix Coyotes in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals Sunday. He chased teammate Mike Richards up ice on a two-on-one and chipped in a rebound to break a 1-1 tie in the second period. With time running out in the game, King beat a Coyotes player to the puck and flung a shot from center ice for an empty-net goal with 48 seconds left.

For the Kings to reach the postseason, it would take a Miracle on Manchester-like intervention. But even if the Kings are going to be home for the sixth consecutive postseason, they appear to finally be going places. They've built a core of talented young players -- goaltender Jonathan Quick, defensemen Drew Doughty, Jack Johnson and Kyle Quincey, and forwards Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown are all 24 or younger.

Dustin Brown's leadership abilities were doubted outside the Kings' locker room but not by those who sit beside him. His teammates' faith was justified. So, apparently, is his staunch belief the Kings were better than they showed while sliding to eighth in the West this season. Brown wristed a long rebound past Vancouver goaltender Cory Schneider 6 minutes 30 seconds into the third period Sunday to lead the Kings to a 1-0 victory over the top-seeded Canucks and the first 3-0 series lead in the club's long and generally unhappy playoff history.

Adding the finishing financial touches to the highly touted downtown sports arena, the Los Angeles City Council approved the remaining agreements Friday, including a personal guarantee from the project's owner that loans of any city funds will be repaid for the basketball and hockey center. Under the financial agreements, the Staples Center, as it will be known, will receive $12 million from the Community Redevelopment Agency, but will not get any city general funds.

Dustin Brown can leave an impression. That was clear early in his Kings career. As a 20-year-old forward with fewer than 40 NHL games on his resume, he went to work. In one week, he clobbered three future Hall of Famers -- Detroit's Nicklas Lidstrom, the Ducks' Chris Pronger and Colorado's Joe Sakic -- to start the 2005-06 season. Some remember. "I recall that. I had the puck, then I was on the ice," Lidstrom said. Some don't. "Nope, don't remember it," Pronger said. "Who can Brown hit for you?"

Dustin Brown apparently can thank Thomas Vanek and Dustin Penner for his six-year contract extension. Or, more accurately, the Edmonton Oilers. With an eye on Brown's becoming a restricted free agent at the end of the season, the Kings on Friday secured the power forward, reaching a deal worth $19.05 million. By signing Brown, who turns 23 next month and will make $3.175 million a season, the Kings avoided what happened to Anaheim in July. That's when the Oilers pitched a five-year, $21.

A key member of the Los Angeles City Council expressed serious reservations Wednesday about the proposal to build a new hockey and basketball arena downtown, refusing to vote for the project during a committee hearing and saying she may oppose it when it comes to the council floor Friday.

A month after getting approval to buy the Dodgers, Rupert Murdoch's Fox Group has taken steps to purchase a minority interest in the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, according to Chase Carey, co-chief operating officer of News Corp. and chairman and chief executive of its Fox Television group. The alliance with the Kings surfaced after a news conference Friday at which Fox confirmed reports that it is buying, with its sports partner Liberty Media Corp.

Standing among the lobbyists in the audience, watching them call the signals, I was in the best place to observe the plays on Wednesday as the proposed downtown sports arena won a lopsided victory in the Los Angeles City Council. The arena advocates wore their game faces, as they say on the sports pages--intently watching the council members, making sure the lawmakers voted as they had promised.

Let's just get ahead of ourselves, shall we? Los Angeles versus St. Louis would represent a highly entertaining first-round playoff series, and Thursday's regular-season game featuring high shootout drama between the Kings and Blues at Staples Center offered an intriguing potential glimpse into the future. Playoff scenarios shift almost by the minute these days, and this night in the Western Conference was no different. The Kings started the morning in eighth place and skyrocketed to third in the West -- by virtue of taking the lead in the Pacific Division, which means possession of the third-seeded spot.

Long streaks -- winning and losing ones -- are notable in the NHL because they're so rare. So Saturday when the Kings skated into Calgary's Saddledome, where they hadn't won in five seasons, to meet a Flames team that hadn't lost in nearly three weeks, you figured something had to give. And in this case it was the Kings' bad luck that gave, with Justin Williams scoring one goal, assisting on two others and then scoring the deciding goal in the seventh round of a dramatic shootout that made them 4-3 winners over the resilient Flames.

Kings defenseman Drew Doughty plans to sleep in today. And given that there isn't much to see in Calgary that he hasn't already seen, he probably will spend the evening going to dinner and a movie. What kind of dinner and what kind of movie don't really matter. "I don't even know what's out there right now," Doughty says, shrugging. So much for the glamorous globetrotting of a professional athlete, where life on the road can be both exhausting and boring. Yet it's become a rite of winter for the three tenants of Staples Center who, for 11 of the past 12 years, have been sent packing in late January or February to make room for the Grammy Awards.

The Kings began the second half of their season much as they skidded toward the end of the first half -- with sloppy defensive play, a lack of discipline and an ugly loss at home. Turnovers and the disintegration of their team-first game consigned the Kings to a 3-2 loss to Toronto Monday before a crowd of 17,834 at Staples Center. The Kings are 1-5 on an eight-game homestand that has become a nightmare that won't end. The Kings (23-18-1) have lost six of their last seven games.

The Kings are imploding, their discipline splintering as rapidly as opponents are outracing their flat-footed defense. They are tripping over the expectations set out for them and by themselves, entirely too fragile mentally and unwilling or unable to make the sacrifices they gladly made last season while stamping themselves as a team to watch. A good beginning Thursday turned into a horror show, a lifeless 5-2 loss to the Nashville Predators that extended their losing streak to a season-worst five and left them winless halfway into an eight-game homestand that should have been their springboard to solidifying a playoff spot.

The Kings ended a peculiar streak against the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night, going to the sixth round of a shootout for a 3-2 victory that goaltender Jonathan Quick sealed with a glove save of an Andrew Cogliano shot. The Oilers won their previous five games in Staples Center, all by shootout, but when Jarret Stoll's shot in the third sudden-death round got a piece of Oilers goalie Devan Dubnyk and dribbled over the line, it sent Terry Murray toward his 100th win as Kings coach.

Developers of the proposed downtown sports complex have lined up a corporate sponsorship deal worth about $100 million, the largest amount ever for rights to name an arena. Staples Inc., the Massachusetts-based office superstore, has agreed to a 20-year deal to become the main corporate sponsor for the $300-million sports and entertainment center in Los Angeles, sources within the company said.

The Kings made their first venture into the free-agent market Thursday, but not for the winger they need so much. Instead, they agreed to a four-year, $13.6-million deal with defenseman Rob Scuderi, who won the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins last month and hasn't yet had his day with the trophy. Scuderi parlayed a team-leading 164 blocked shots -- and a strong postseason performance, especially in the Cup final -- into a huge raise over the $725,000 he earned last season.

From Chicago The Kings attacked well in spurts, defended well in spurts, and did enough things right Sunday against the defending Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks to realize that consistency ? or their maddening lack of it ? will determine their fate this season. "I thought we played a pretty good game," center Anze Kopitar said, "but a pretty good game against these guys is not enough. " The Blackhawks, depleted by injuries but regrouping on the fly, made sure "pretty good" was inadequate for the Kings.

Defenseman Drew Doughty had called the Kings' game against Florida Thursday a must-win situation. Anze Kopitar's skill in back-handing a rebound past Tomas Vokoun spared Doughty the prospect of eating his words in defeat. "I don't even want to know what would have happened," Doughty said after Kopitar's goal at 17:17 of the third period lifted the Kings to a 3-2 victory over the Panthers at Staples Center, ending their four-game losing streak and halting a 1-7 slide. "Now that we finally got this win we're going to come out for the next game with a lot of confidence and be at our best.