June 2, 2012
by Gann Matsuda
COMMENTARY: With the Los Angeles Kings playing in the 2012 Stanley Cup Final, something Kings fans have only seen their team do once before in the franchise’s nearly 45-year history, it is astonishing to see media based in the Eastern Time Zone only now taking notice of the Kings, most notably, the exceptional talent of center Anze Kopitar. Why only now? Will the Kings ever get themselves out from that dark shadow known as obscurity?
Los Angeles Kings center Anze Kopitar is well-known to Los Angeles
hockey fans. But he appears to be totally new to so many hockey
writers, who are, obviously, completely unfamiliar with him.
(click to view a larger image).
Photo: David Sheehan/FrozenRoyalty.net
LOS ANGELES — If it was not already crystal-clear well before the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs began, the
Los Angeles Kings advancing to the Stanley Cup Final this season has vividly demonstrated how much the media in the East, and much of Canada, ignores teams in the West and Southwest, especially the Kings.
To be sure, many of the same reasons that the Kings were ignored for so many years after they entered the National Hockey League in 1967, the league’s first expansion from its Original Six teams, still exist today, most notably, that by the time the Kings hit the ice to start a home game at Staples Center, most of those who might watch in the Eastern Time Zone are either asleep, or about to go to bed. Read more of this post
