That can't be right. Or can it? The Kings have always seemed to have some financial trouble, dating back to before the lockout. That's common knowledge. After that we went through an entire year without hockey for the sole purpose of restoring the financial viability of all the clubs. There were, and are, no guarantees that the clubs are all in the green, but from everything we have been told over the last three years they are doing much better than prior to the lockout. But wait ... The Los Angeles Daily News reported today that the Kings are losing more money now than they were prior to the lockout. Those emboldened words are key here.

I'll let that you soak that in for a moment while I present you with an excerpt from the Daily News.

The Kings declined to release specific numbers, but said they're losing more money per year now than before the lockout. At the start of the lockout, the Kings claimed to be losing $8 to $10 million a year.

"We're building our organization differently, to meet the reality that we're losing even more than we did before the lockout," chief marketing officer Chris McGowan said. "We have to run a better business."

Thus, the ticket-price increases, even coming off a season in which the Kings tied for the fewest points in the NHL. The Kings believe the increases are necessary, in part, to help stabilize their bottom line.

So are the Kings really losing more money now than before the lockout? Wasn't the point of the lockout to fix problems such as these?

It's no secret that the 2007-08 NHL season didn't end the way New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur wanted it to. As if seeing his team flushed out of the playoffs in just five games wasn't enough, Brodeur also got to endure a public beatdown at the hands of winger Sean Avery. No, Avery never laid a glove on Brodeur. Instead, he did something far worse: Avery shamed him with his antics, something that Brodeur only compounded as he refused to shake Avery's hand at the end of the series.

It's also no secret that Brodeur is closer to the end of his career than even he wants to admit, but if he has his way in a meeting with some fellow players and general managers in a few weeks, he'll be sure to have a significant influence on the game for many years after he's gone.

What am I talking about? This morning, the NHL and NHLPA announced the formation of the Goalie Equipment Working Group, a body consisting of five players and four general managers. According to a statement from the NHLPA, the group will "examine the configuration and dimensions of goaltender equipment with respect to safety and performance."

"If the working group decides alterations to the rules governing goaltender equipment are warranted, and will not jeopardize the safety of the goalies, these recommendations will be forwarded to the Competition Committee for consideration," the statement said.

In other words, if there's any way this group can figure out a way to shrink the equipment in order to increase goal scoring without jeopardizing the life and health of goaltenders, they'll do it. Then again, taking a look at the members of the group, my guess is we won't be seeing any dramatic changes after that June 11 meeting.

The Tampa Bay Lightning had a 48.8-percent chance of winning the NHL Draft Lottery; yet given the year they've had, GM Jay Feaster told the St. Pete Times that there was "no way in hell" the Bolts would snag the top pick. Reverse psychology appears to work on Lady Luck, as the Lightning were announced tonight as owners of the top pick in the draft this June in Ottawa.

The prize of the draft class is Steve Stamkos from the Sarnia Sting of the Ontario Hockey League -- a center whose two-way game has scouts drooling. Times beat writer Damian Cristodero quotes Dave Andreychuk, who represented Tampa Bay at the lottery and seems to indicate the Bolts are ready to make Stamkos the Malkin to Vinny's Sidney up the middle. It sure doesn't sound like Tampa is looking for a mini-Lindros deal to fill some of its considerable holes:

"As an organization we're very happy. We have a kid who is going to be a superstar. We're excited. We're really looking forward to that."

Check out more draft coverage from the NHL and more on Stamkos in our coverage of the phenom last year. TSN polled some scouts before the lottery and found Stamkos was still atop their draft boards; New York native and Peterborough Pete defenseman Zach Bogosian was No. 2. That pick belongs to the Los Angeles Kings; Rich Hammond of Inside the Kings is running a poll to see which player Kings fans would like to see taken second overall. Bogosian trails offensive defenseman Drew Doughty in the early voting.

UPDATE: Hammond has some late comments from Kings GM Dean Lombardi, who seems to be influenced by a certain franchise in Anaheim when it comes to building a champion with quality defensemen.

It was only a few days ago that my FanHouse colleague Greg Wyshynski took notice of the handiwork of Phoenix winger Daniel Carcillo after the Coyotes dropped a 3-1 decision to the Canucks in Vancouver. But while his 21 penalty minutes combined with a goal might have drawn the admiration of many, it also seems have drawn the ire of a number of officials around the league. In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday night's game, even Carcillo's coach, Wayne Gretzky, admitted that Carcillo had become something of a marked man.

From Phoenix, One Fan's Perspective picks up the thread:

For the past few games, Carcillo has been unfairly maligned in the eyes of the officials on the ice. Clearly, Carcillo is not an angel, and I do recognize that. However, he doesn't cause trouble and skate away like some players in the NHL. He takes the heat and by doing so it sparks his team.

Whether there is a conspiracy afoot, or just plain incompetence, remains to be seen (but in this case, I lean to the conspiracy theory), but last night against the Los Angeles Kings was the first time ever I saw a five-minute major penalty called for interference with a game misconduct tacked on for good measure.

He's talking about this hit on Tom Preissing last night against Los Angeles:

We've learned more about the Los Angeles Kings in the last week than we probably ever thought we'd care to know about a team with 27 wins and 60 points on the standings. There's the continuing fallout from Iain MacIntyre's remarkable article in the Vancouver Sun in which Dan Cloutier throws his current franchise under the bus. Among the Kings' alleged sins against their $3.1 million-a-year bust between the pipes: Making him change his goalie mask due to insurance issues; forcing him to play while injured; and making him fly coach (gasp!) and stay at a Super-8 Motel (double gasp!) before having season-ending surgery. The fallout:

• Alanah from Canucks and Beyond and Rudy Kelly of Battle of California sliced and diced the article.
• GM Dean Lombardi and the Kings responded to Cloutier's claims, nearly point-by-point.
• The Kings then clarified their stance that they never asked Cloutier to play hurt.
• Kings beat writer Rich Hammond then offered a third news update on his blog about the claims, including an article from Goalie News magazine in which Cloutier made many of the same claims several months ago.

Interesting stuff, but it's a he said/they said situation that actually pales in comparison to the news made by Lombardi over the weekend at a "State of the Franchise" meeting with season-ticket holders. It was a candid, controversial conversation that revealed plenty about why the Kings have struggled and what the future holds.

As the Canucks pull into Anaheim tonight, the team is on the crest of a three-game winning streak, one that's being authored in part by a rather unlikely duo. I'm talking about Ryan Kesler and Alex Burrows, a pair of hard nosed forwards who have combined for 15 points in the last eight games as the Canucks have gone 4-2-2 and kept themselves inside the safety zone in the Western Conference playoff race.

Heretofore, Kesler was best known as a smooth skating prospect the Canucks had to overpay to keep thanks to Bobby Clarke, while Burrows was best known for staying in shape in the offseason thanks to plenty of ball hockey. But now, the emergence this season of both as players who can be responsible in their own end while still chipping in with some offense once in a while has given the Canucks an added boost while allowing them to save some money by shipping former uber-pest Matt Cooke to Washington rather than re-sign him.

The pair managed to shine the brightest in Vancouver's two most recent games, with Burrows striking for a goal and two assists against St. Louis on Saturday, while Kesler scored both the game-tying and game-winning goals in a 2-1 OT win over Los Angeles last night.

As a former first round pick, it wasn't entirely unexpected to see Kesler round into form. As for Burrows, a 26-year old bilingual native of Montreal, the route to a steady NHL job wasn't always as clear, with Vancouver head coach Alan Vigneault telling him as recently as the end of last season that if he didn't pick up his game, he might be starting the season in Manitoba:

"I told him at the exit meetings last year that if he didn't pick it up there was a chance he wasn't going to start with the Canucks. He did everything he could to come to camp in great shape."

Last season, Burrows had all of nine points for the Canucks. As of today, he's got 29, including 11 goals, with 13 games to play. And their teammates are noticing the difference, with the recently returned Brendan Morrison saying that the play of the pair has made all the difference now that the team's big guns are misfiring.

For more on the transformation of Burrows into an uber-pest, go visit the invaluable Orland Kurtenblog.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Goaltending must be such a strange career choice.

Case in point, Jose Theodore, who went from the league's MVP to prime buyout candidate in only a handful of years. Theodore's back on the rails this season, at least in part, and looks to have helped lead the Avalanche back into the postseason, but the past few years haven't been pretty.

In the March 11 issue of The Hockey News, he talked about some of the dark days.

"You find out who your real friends are when you're at the rock bottom," Theodore said. "You find out about who only cared about the things you did and not who you are."

And that's a former Hart Trophy winner talking. Imagine how Dan Cloutier, one of the most shat-upon NHL players of all time, feels.

Like so many neglected Geocities fan sites, Dan Cloutier Central exists as an historic snapshot of a particular player's career. In this instance, time stopped just as Cloutier was embarking on his stint with the Vancouver Canucks, following stops in New York, Tampa Bay and, of course, the set of the ABC sitcom "Spin City." It's an appropriate place for the timeline to end, seeing as how Cloutier's career as a legitimate NHL goaltender was basically finished the minute he strapped on a Kings sweater.

Many Canucks fans felt validated when Cloutier flopped with Los Angeles, after the brittle and unreliable goaltender was dealt for a pair of draft picks in the summer of '06. Cloutier signed a two-year, $3.1 million contract extension; Kings fans were left to wonder if either Cloutier or Jason Schmidt were the worst signing in Los Angeles sports that year, especially after the oft-injured keeper passed through waivers without a claim this season.

Cloutius Maximus is scheduled to start tonight for the Kings at home against Vancouver, and there's actually more on the line than just personal pride (and the opportunity to out-duel his successor, Roberto Luongo). The Kings have a chance to sweep the Canucks in a season series for the first time in 27 years, having won the three previous games by a combined score of 12-7. And with the final two playoff berths in the Western Conference up for grabs, a big effort from Cloutier tonight could help ensure that he and his former teammates actually end up in the same place this postseason.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

At least in hockey terms, anyway. Last night in what could potentially be considered a small apocalypse in the minds of the "traditional" hockey fan (in the most conservative sense of the word), the state of California, also known as the state of the Governator, established it's hockey dominance over the province of Ontario. The Ontario I'm referring to of course is the Canadian one and not the city of Ontario, California that is home to one of the largest shopping malls in North America. But when the Kings beat the Senators 2-0 last night, it capped an epic run for the state of California which started with a Stanley Cup win last spring. If you add up the records of the Californian teams (Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Jose) against those from Ontario (Toronto, Ottawa) it's a sweeping 6-0 margin which includes a 21-7 goal differential. Can this really be? A sunshine filled American state impressing it's dominance over a Canadian stalwart of hockey throughout the years? Who would have thunk.

My FanHouse colleague Earl Sleek pointed this all out earlier today at Battle of California very eloquently with some pictures that I can't figure out if I should call them NSFW or just plain ridiculous. If mascots eating each other and states doing the nasty nasty are considered NSFW, then sure. I'm just really confused by it all and the same time can't stop laughing. But mark this date down, folks. It's the first day in our continuous march towards the end of civilization as we know it. First, it was Mike Milbury actually stepping down as Isles GM and Gary Roberts getting hurt. Now, it's California turning out to have better hockey teams than Ontario. Next, it'll be the United States losing it's grip as the world's central power ... Oh, wait ... Shoot. FINAL: Los Angeles 2, Ottawa 0.

And now your featured presentation: Jose Theodore shuts out the defending Cup champions (and yes, I'm saying that purely for dramatic effect), the world continues to carry on in a state of shock as Peter Forsberg is held scoreless for a second night, and somehow the Earth survives the news that Toronto scored eight goals (no, I'm not kidding).

Whenever sportswriters opine about a coach "losing the locker room," it's a delicate declaration. Conditions can change with a single week's winning streak, and the off-the-record grumblings of a fourth-liner are just empty gripes if the coach has the backing of the team's power structure. St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz wonders if coach Andy Murray has "lost the room," as the once-promising Blues drop like a stone in the conference standings:

The grumbling is intensifying over Murray's many meetings and other matters. For his part, Murray has publicly questioned the players' effort. This isn't a happy group. The players responded dramatically when Murray took over for Mike Kitchen on Dec. 11, 2006, but the charm has worn off. Since March 3, 2007, the Blues are 34-35-14. Since Dec. 9 of this season, the Blues have the fewest wins in the league. The talent level hasn't dropped, but the morale seems to be sinking.

This accusation might be dismissed as a byproduct of the team's overall disappointment, rather than its catalyst. But as Steven Ovadia pointed out, that would ignore the fact that Murray's tenure in Los Angeles ended when the players tuned him out. As Dennis Bernstein of The Fourth Period wrote in his eulogy back in 2006, it was "doubtful anyone in the locker room will be shedding a tear for the man":

Insiders say that the Murray's controlling nature and exacting detail took a toll on the team, especially veterans like Luc Robitaille and Jeremy Roenick. "Andy scripted out everything and that might work for 50-60 games but to have a player's every movement on and off the ice planned, it leaves no room for creativity. I think that wears on the veterans in the group as the season progresses," said a source close to the team.

Whatever the case, Murray has enough support from management to return behind the St. Louis bench again next season. He was signed to a "long term" contract when he replaced Mike Kitchen in Dec. 2006.