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Pro Sports BLOG |
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April 2008
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Columnist Jim Alexander's take: The Ducks and Kings face off for the final time this season in a little less than an hour, and whlie the Ducks have their regular season finale against Phoenix Sunday and then a playoff series against Dallas on their docket, after today the Kings will only have Monday to look forward to. That's when the NHL will hold its draft lottery (which will be televised live at 5 p.m. by Versus, aka The Network Nobody Sees). And that's when the Kings will find out if their body of work this season was enough to get them the No. 1 pick in the June draft. First prize, by all consensus, figures to be Steve Stamkos, a center for the Sarnia Sting of the Ontario Hockey League. Stamkos is 6-foot-1, 180, and the numbers alone (58 goals, 47 assists in 61 games and a plus-minus of plus-18 in the regular season) don't appear to do him justice. Here's a closer look: , And another:
Going into today's play, the Kings and Tampa Bay Lightning are tied for the league's worst record, but if it ends that way the Kings will be second from the bottom by virtue of one more victory. The last place team, under the weighted lottery system, has a 25 percent chance of winning the drawing, but its chances of getting the No. 1 pick actually are much better than that. No team can move up more than four positions, so if a team that finishes 17th through 25th wins the drawing, the last place team retains the No. 1 pick. The 29th place team has an 18.8 percent chance of stealing the No. 1 pick. So there's a lot at stake today, both with the Kings-Ducks match and with No. 29 Tampa Bay's game tonight at No. 28 Atlanta. The Stamkos Derby currently looks like this: Atlanta 33-40-8, 74 points (FOOTNOTE: Think the Kings aren't going for it? Dan Cloutier is starting in goal today.) |
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