Summer doldrums continue

This summer has been magnificently boring. The Olympics broke the monotony a little bit, but the stuff I'm interested in is over, so now I'm just counting down the days to when training camp starts, to when the preseason games start, to when the third sweater will be released, and finally to when the regular season begins.

There hasn't been very much action at all. Some bloggers have been writing "five things I would change about the NHL" or "100 things about me" posts, just so they could have SOMEthing to write about. I've been thinking about writing a "one thing about me" post, or maybe some posts about music. I'll get to those later. Or not.

I've been keeping half of one eye on the Kings this summer. They're well below the salary cap floor and there have been a number of rumors about how they're going to remedy that. I'm completely puzzled by the fact that they haven't re-signed the youngster Patrick O'Sullivan, who was one of their best players last year with 53 (22/31) points last year. They've already let Mike Cammalleri go, they're overstocked with inexperienced goalies, dreadfully thin on defense, and as September looms, they're still not doing anything about it.

The most puzzling of all that is the O'Sullivan situation. I haven't heard a word about contract negotiations, and I've heard his name mentioned in a couple of trade rumors, but I nearly fell out of my seat when I saw "O'Sullivan wins 49'ers QB starting job" on my Yahoo NFL news. I thought "Wow, that's certainly a surprise", but then I quickly realized that they weren't talking about Patrick O'Sullivan. As it turns out, it's J.T. O'Sullivan, who has never started an NFL game in his six year career.

This is what happens when you're desperate for some hockey news. You misinterpret things. One time, my friend Patrick saw "Shockey", as in Jeremy Shockey, NFL tight end, come across the ESPN crawl. Without pausing to think about it, he said "What the heck is ess hockey?"

Kaberle might go to LA. Johnson might leave.

While I was catching up on some of my blog reading, I found a short post over at The Battle of California about the Kings and their struggle to reach the salary cap floor.

So far, the Kings have only $27.7M in salary commitments for the 2008-09 season. The salary cap floor is $40.7M. They have yet to re-sign RFA forward Patrick O'Sullivan, or the recently traded for Jarret Stoll and Brad Richardson. They have bought out goaltender Dan Cloutier, but still have somewhere between three and five goalies under contract. Granted, most of those contracts are two-way deals, so that money won't count against the cap. They have just four defensemen signed. The free agent market has pretty much dried up, so they're going to have to make some trades to get defensemen and possibly some trades just to take on some salary commitment.

O'Sullivan had a pretty good season in the last year of his entry level contract. He put up 53(22/31) points, and stands to have a payday probably in the neighborhood of $3.5M. Even if that's the case, the Kings would be $9.5 below the cap, and they'll need defense. None of their free agent defensemen can command a big bucks payday, so they're still in trouble versus the cap floor. Why not trade some of their young talent and/or draft picks to Carolina for defenseman Franke Kaberle and his hefty $2.5M salary?

Another interesting thing that's being discussed in LA is another trade that would be done for the express purpose of spending money. One of Carolina's favorite "I hate that guy" guys, Jack Johnson, is in the last year of his entry level contract and could be dangled as attractive trade bait to a team looking to shed some salary this season. Jim Kelly from SI.com suggests that the Blackhawks would make a good trade partner, but his suggestion of Johnson for Khabibulin doesn't make sense because the 'Hawks aren't deep enough in goal to do that, and I don't think Huet is ready to be anointed "the one". The Hawks (and Flames, and Flyers) need to shed salary, but I don't see that particular trade going down.

As for the other? Picking up a veteran defenseman and a salary commitment? Absolutely! I'm not sure what Carolina would want in return if they sent Kaberle that way, though. Draft picks? A bag of pucks? 20 gallons of fuel for the Olympia? (Zamboni™ is a registered trademark, and Carolina's is not a ZAMBONI brand ice resurfacer).

When the Kings traded away their best player -- Mike Cammalleri, it was evident that they're entering yet another rebuilding phase. Now, they have yet to re-sign one of their best young players --Patrick O'Sullivan, and there is talk of trading away one of their other young promising players -- Anze Kopitar or Jack Johnson. They're never going to get better if they keep doing that.

Anyway, I hope the Canes can help them (and themselves) by sending Kaberle out there. Anything at all in return would be great.

US squeaks by Germany

On Thursday, at the IIHF World Championships, USA barely got by Germany 6-4. The Americans got off to a 3-0 lead in the first three minutes of the game, but the rest of the game was decidedly Germany's.

One thing is abundantly clear. I didn't watch or even listen to the game, but it's clear that Craig Anderson did not have a good game. He faced only nine shots, and he surrendered four goals before being lifted in favour of Robert Esche. If you're scoring along at home, Anderson's save % is a nightmarish .555. That won't cut it. In 15 minutes of relief, Esche was perfect, stopping all six shots he saw.

Germany is not a very good team, but Finland is. If Anderson plays like that on Sunday, the Finns are likely to beat USA 12-2.

Zach Parise had two goals and an assist to pace the Americans. Our native North Carolinian Patrick O'Sullivan scored his third marker of the tournament. Dustin Brown and Jason Pominville had the other goals.

Hopefully, Anderson can snap out of it. Otherwise, it's going to be embarrassing.

Now. Here's the big question.

WHY IS RYAN MILLER NOT ON THIS TEAM?

Ryan Miller is without a doubt the best active American-born goaltender. The simple answer to the big question is that he declined an invitation to play. My guess is that he's still pissed about getting snubbed with respect to the 2006 Olympics roster. Miller had a thumb injury early in the 2006 season and was taken off the USA Hockey's radar. He returned from injury and had a sensational first half of the season. He was named to the "taxi squad", which didn't make any sense to him or to anybody else for that matter.

As for his refusal to play at the IIHF World Championships, he is using "I need to train" and "I need to focus on securing a new contract" as excuses. The real reason is that he wants to drink USA Hockey's milkshake.

I... Drink.... Your..... Milkshake. I drink it up!!!

Canda too much for USA

In IIHF play On Tuesday, team Canada and team USA played a great game in the final game of round robin play for their group. Both teams headed in undefeated, and Canada stayed that way with an exciting 5-4 win.

All accounts are that the American team outplayed the Canadians for most of the game, but Canada's Dany Heatley was again the hero. He tallied two more goals, including the game winner with less than a minute to play. Heatley leads the tournament in goals (six) and points (ten) after three games played.

Brent Burns, Jonathan Toews and Derek Roy also scored goals for Canada.

Tim Thomas started in nets for USA, but was replaced by Craig Anderson at the start of the third period. Cam Ward got the nod for Canada, and picked up the win despite giving up four goals.

Patrick O'Sullivan (Winston-Salem, NC) scored his second goal of the tournament for USA, and also added an assist. Also scoring were Jason Pominville (Buffalo, NY), Zach Parise (Minneapolis, MN / University of North Dakota) and Dustin Brown (Ithica, NY).

On Wednesday, the preliminary round will conclude, then Team USA will play the #3 team from pool C on Thursday. That will probably be Slovakia, unless Slovakia upsets Finland on Wednesday. If that's the case, it'll be Germany. On Sunday, USA will play Finland, who will be the #1 team from pool C. Then they'll play Germany (#2) on Monday. All of this assumes that Finland beats Slovakia and Germany beats Norway on Wednesday. That's not assuming too much.

USA, Canada get easy wins

The IIHF World Championships began on Friday, and things went pretty much according to plan for the United States and Canada.

Cam Ward made 22 saves and Dany Heatley recorded a hat trick, leading Canada to a 5-1 win over Slovenia. Eric Staal had one assist.

Team USA, who wore vintage 1960 sweaters for the game, cruised to a 4-0 victory over Latvia. The Americans got all four goals via the power play. The Blackhawks' rookie sensation Patrick Kane (Buffalo, NY) netted one goal and two assists to lead the way. Devils' Defenseman Paul Martin (Minneapolis, MN ) registered three assists. Winston-Salem, North Carolina native Patrick O'Sullivan also potted a goal. The standout for the Kings most certainly became the first native North Carolinian to score a goal in international play.

On Sunday, Canada will play Latvia and the USA will play Slovenia.