Pancakes with the Kings' Dustin Penner!

 

 

Good morning from the International House of Pancakes on the corner of Manchester and Sepulveda —  actually, not too far from where the Kings once played, at the Forum.

Impressively, a tired Dustin Penner, operating on very little sleep, is serving pancakes, signing autographs and having his picture taken with Kings fans. Considering more than $3,000 was raised for the Kings Care Foundation, there was this obvious question for the marketing whiz kids, Penner and Kings fan John Hoven, who runs the website Mayors Manor.

What's next?

"Probably wrestling," Penner said with a shrug and a smile.

That was the same wit he displayed when he talked about getting hit with debilitating back spasms, missing the Kings' game against Columbus in early January. The next day at practice Penner then told us — with that same sly wit — how it happened. He added that he had hurt his back when he sat down to eat pancakes made by his wife, smartly noting that they were "delicious."

The incident, as if often happens these days, went viral on the Internet. Penner became a major target in cyberspace, apparently from those not knowing that you can hurt your back with the slightest of movements. 

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— Lisa Dillman

Photo: Dustin Penner serves up some pancakes. Credit: Lisa Dillman / Los Angeles Times.

Kings' Dustin Penner flips pancake flap for good cause

With only four goals this season, Kings left wing Dustin Penner won’t win the NHL scoring title. But he has won over many fans with his humorous take on the day he sat down to a pancake breakfast and suffered back spasms that kept him out of a game.

Penner has joked about the incident and now has partnered with the Kings and IHOP for a pancake breakfast that will benefit the team’s charitable foundation.

Seventy-five fans will have a chance to eat a buffet breakfast with Penner on Feb. 13 at the Westchester IHOP, at 8600 South Sepulveda Blvd. Fans can buy different prize packs that give them a chance to be chosen to share breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs and orange juice or coffee.

A $10 package includes a signed Penner player card and one chance to win tickets to the pancake breakfast. A $25 package includes a signed card, a sheet with two pairs of Kings eye black and three chances to win tickets. A $50 package includes a signed part, two pairs of eye black, a key chain and seven chances to win tickets.

Proceeds will go to the Kings Care Foundation. Full details are available at www.lakings.com/pancakes.

--Helene Elliott

Photo: Dustin Penner. Credit: Harry How / Getty Images.

 

Dustin Penner loses a point, Colin Fraser gains a roster spot

The more things change, the fewer points left wing Dustin Penner has.

The Kings announced Thursday that a video review of their third goal against Nashville on Tuesday showed that Penner should not have gotten an assist on the play and it was taken away from him, negating what appeared to be his first multi-point game as a King.

According to a statement released by the team, the review showed “that Penner lifted the stick of a Nashville player but never did touch the puck as the puck moved up the ice.” The assist he originally got was given to Willie Mitchell.

That doesn’t change the fact Penner played a solid game for the second successive night, after a strong effort at San Jose on Monday.

“He’s played better here the last three games. I really like his energy and I like the way he’s starting to move around the ice,” Kings Coach Terry Murray said before his team faced the defending West champion Vancouver Canucks on Thursday night at Staples Center.

“Much more confident, much more with authority. He’s in an athletic position. He’s got his knees bent and he’s playing both ways. And with that kind of work I think everything will get on track in the offensive part of it.”

Dustin Penner's fitness a weighty but happy topic for Kings

The most closely guarded secret during the first day of the Kings’ training camp — more closely guarded even than the team's contract offer to unsigned defenseman Drew Doughty — was Dustin Penner’s weight.

The massive left wing, who contributed only two goals and six points in 19 games after being acquired from Edmonton late last season, said Sept. 11 that he had lost about 10 pounds but didn’t know his weight. Players weighed in Friday but staffers in the Kings’ media relations department said they didn’t get the numbers. Coach Terry Murray said Saturday morning he didn’t know, either, though Murray said Penner’s fitness test results were good.

General Manager Dean Lombardi hunted down the results Saturday afternoon and now it can be disclosed: Penner weighed in between 242 and 243 pounds, down from the 260 he weighed when the Kings acquired him from the Oilers.

Lombardi said Penner is “on the right track,” but still has a ways to go to reach optimal shape. Being in a contract year should be incentive enough for the lumbering left wing to get there.

“It feels good. It’s fun to be out here and get started after a long off-season,” said Penner, who was on a line with Anze Kopitar and Justin Williams in the day’s second group.

He said his body fat was 4% lower than before — though he wouldn’t say what it had been — and said he didn’t know his weight. But he looked thinner around the face and less like he’s laboring to get going up the ice.

“I tried this new thing where I close my eyes when I step on the scale and I don’t find out until the media guide comes out,” he said. “It’s more exciting that way.

Kings' Westgarth saddened by deaths of fellow enforcers

Emptying the digital recorder after Sunday’s Hockey Fest event held by the Kings at Staples Center....

The deaths of enforcers Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak since May have stunned the NHL and resonated especially deeply with Kings forward Kevin Westgarth.

Westgarth, who has three assists and 114 penalty minutes in 65 career NHL games, said he can “empathize with the various struggles and the roller coaster it can be” to be a tough guy and said he felt sorry for the families each player left behind.

“I’ve been extremely lucky. It’s just an incredible tragedy,” he said Sunday. “I’m in essentially the same role as those guys. It’s not hugely different.

“It kind of makes you look in the mirror. It’s awful. And it does hit a little closer to home and it’s just really confusing.”

Boogaard’s death was attributed to an accidental and toxic mix of alcohol and the painkiller oxycodone. His family donated his brain to a Boston University study on the effects of repeated brain trauma.

Dustin Penner stays in, Alexei Ponikarovsky out for Kings in Game 5

Greetings from San Jose, where the Sharks had their full team on the ice for the morning skate at HP Pavilion but the Kings’ session remained optional. What matters most is who shows up Saturday night, when the Sharks can end the team’s playoff series with a victory. A sixth game, if necessary, will be played Monday at Staples Center.

Kings Coach Terry Murray said he will stick with his plan to insert left wing Scott Parse in the lineup, even though Parse hasn’t played since Nov. 15 and underwent hip surgery shortly after that game. Parse will skate alongside Michal Handzus and Justin Williams, as Parse did in Friday’s practice.

The Kings’ fourth line will be Dustin Penner, Jarret Stoll and Kevin Westgarth, which means Alexei Ponikarovsky -- who scored the Kings’ final goal in their 6-3 loss Thursday at home -- will be scratched from the lineup, as will Oscar Moller.

Whether he’s doing it to justify General Manager Dean Lombardi’s trade for Penner or he believes against all evidence that Penner will suddenly become motivated to play at both ends of the ice, Murray kept Penner in the lineup. 

“Against this San Jose team, they’ve got three dominant lines. I’ve said this before, they’ve got three lines that are probably as good as any in the National Hockey League,” Murray said Saturday morning. “And they can play the game any way you want, any way they want it. And so it’s important for us to play four lines.

“When you have your top guy out of the lineup like this everybody has to dig in, check the proper way and play hard every shift. So with Parse going into the lineup here tonight I’m going to take Ponikarovsky out. Put Penner there with Stoll. It’s a little bit of a risk but I haven’t been getting enough from the top line on that left side, on the production side of it, and Parse has ability. He has skill. So I’m going to take that look here tonight.”

Murray said he took Ponikarovsky’s Game 4 goal into consideration but found better reasons to play Penner, who has one assist and is -4 defensively in the series.

Kings: Scott Parse to return

Kings Coach Terry Murray, trying to plug the leaks that allowed the San Jose Sharks to score 12 goals in the last two games and take a 3-1 lead in the teams’ best-of-seven playoff series, juggled his lines in practice Friday to include winger Scott Parse, who last played on Nov. 15 and soon after that underwent hip surgery.

Parse skated alongside Michal Handzus and Justin Williams on Friday. On the other lines, Ryan Smyth was on the left with Trevor Lewis and Dustin Brown, and Kyle Clifford, Brad Richardson and Wayne Simmonds remained together.

Murray said he’s not sure about the composition of his fourth line for Saturday’s game at HP Pavilion but Kevin Westgarth will be a part of it. The Kings’ resident enforcer was one of five players wearing green jerseys Friday, along with Dustin Penner, Jarret Stoll, Alexei Ponikarovsky and Oscar Moller. 

“Westgarth will not be out. He’s played well. He’s played an important role,” Murray said. “I’ll keep him in the lineup.”

Dustin Penner making wrong kind of difference for the Kings

Despite a meltdown that led to a 6-5 overtime loss to the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday and left them facing a 2-1 series deficit, the Kings used the same lineup in practice Wednesday and won't change it for Game 4, to be played Thursday at Staples Center.

That means left wing Dustin Penner, again a liability on defense and now stuck in a 16-game goal drought, will keep his spot alongside Michal Handzus and Dustin Brown, and that enforcer Kevin Westgarth will return to the fourth line. Winger Oscar Moller, who did a capable job filling in for suspended Jarret Stoll in Game 2, will be scratched again, presumably because he has not grown to 6 feet 2 and 200 pounds in the last few days and probably won't.

Coach Terry Murray occasionally switched fourth-line left wing Alexei Ponikarovsky with Penner on Tuesday while his team squandered leads of 4-0 and 5-3 but said he is not inclined to elevate Ponikarovsky above Penner in Game 4.

"No, I'm not thinking that way at the start of a game," Murray said Wednesday after the team practiced in El Segundo.

"Dustin Penner is a very talented guy. And he can become a very good player in this game. Size, strength, speed, skill. He can make a difference in a game for us and that's what we need right now, for him to give us that kind of a performance.

"But clearly if things are not going well for him personally then I have the option of moving Ponikarovsky up there, which I did a couple of times. That's the option that I have as I move throughout the game."

Slumping Dustin Penner 'waiting for that dam to break'

When a coach says a player is performing “better,” as Kings Coach Terry Murray has recently described the efforts of left wing Dustin Penner, the natural reaction is, better than what?

Or … how could he be worse?

The brawny winger, acquired from Edmonton on Feb. 28 for defense prospect Colten Teubert, a first-round pick in this year’s entry draft and a conditional third-round pick in the 2012 draft, finished the season with no points in his last 12 games and no goals in his last 13. That streak has continued in the first two games of the Kings’ first-round playoff series against the San Jose Sharks.

He also had a  -2 defensive rating in the Kings’ split of the first two games at San Jose and was demoted to the fourth line during the opener. Those games were his first in postseason play since he won the Cup with the Ducks in 2007, an even longer drought than his goal slump.

Penner will be back with Michal Handzus and Dustin Brown in Game 3 on Tuesday night at Staples Center, but Murray never hesitates to mix up his lines so that can easily change if Penner doesn't produce.

Kings need quick turnaround--and a turnaround for Jonathan Quick--before they can celebrate

In two of their last three games the Kings have unwittingly been a footnote to history.

In losing last Thursday at Vancouver they allowed the Canucks to clinch the President’s trophy and top overall seeding in the playoffs. On Monday their 6-1 loss at San Jose allowed the Sharks to clinch a fourth consecutive Pacific division title.

Neither experience was a happy one for the Kings.

“It’s not fun at all, especially Vancouver. We’ve had a pretty good rivalry against them the last little bit,” forward Brad Richardson said. “It’s never easy seeing that team beat you or clinch the league.”

The Kings hoped to do some clinching of their own Tuesday night. To secure a playoff spot they need to gain two points or to have Dallas fail to get two points in its last four games, and the Stars are at home Tuesday to face the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Kings next play Wednesday, when they face Phoenix at Staples Center.

Goaltender Jonathan Quick, who gave up four goals on 16 shots at San Jose before being replaced by Jonathan Bernier, is scheduled to start against the Coyotes.

“There is no conversation. Quick’s our No. 1 goaltender. He’s the guy that we’re riding,” Coach Terry Murray said after the team practiced Tuesday in El Segundo.

Kings can clinch playoff spot with win at San Jose

Because the Ducks’ loss to Dallas on Sunday prevented the Kings from clinching a playoff spot, the Kings will have a chance to take that final step themselves Monday, when they face the Sharks in San Jose.

“Win and we’re in,” winger Ryan Smyth said, “and then we can climb.”

The Kings’ magic number for clinching their second straight postseason berth is two: They must earn two points or Dallas must fail to earn two. The Stars next play on Tuesday, at home against Columbus.

The Kings held an optional morning skate Monday at HP Pavilion. Coach Terry Murray said afterward that he had watched the Ducks lose to Dallas on Sunday night but is more concerned with his own team's efforts.

“I think you always have to look at games that way. You want to take care of your own business and do your thing the right way,” he said.

There’s no difference, he said, in having another team’s result take care of the magic number or having his own team do it.