Brad Richardson recorded the first hat trick of his National Hockey League career to lead the Los Angeles Kings to a 6-4 victory over the Colorado Avalanche at the Pepsi Center in Denver on October 23.
Richardson started the game centering the Kings’ fourth line and scored his first goal while centering Brayden Schenn and Kevin Westgarth. But he was moved up to left wing on the first line with center Anze Kopitar and right wing Dustin Brown during the second period, replacing Andrei Loktionov.
Richardson made the most of his opportunities, scoring two goals in the third period, one of them a shorthanded goal not long after the Avs scored during a five-minute major power play, the result of Kings right wing Wayne Simmonds striking Avalanche forward T.J. Galliardi with the butt end of his stick.
The Kings also found their power play in the game, scoring twice on five power play opportunities.
Defenseman Matt Greene, who was activated from the non-roster list prior to the game, made his 2010-11 debut in this game, paired with defenseman Willie Mitchell. Greene had 21:24 of ice time (27 shifts). earning a +2 plus/minus rating.
During the game, the Kings and Avalanche hosted a Twitter “hashtag” battle, encouraging their fans on Twitter to post messages during the game to the microblogging service that included “#gokings”or “#goavs” in the message.
The team with the most Twitter hashtags posts at the end of the game won the battle, with #gokings getting 29,374 posts, while #goavs had 13,876 posts.
Also, $1.00 for each hashtag posting was donated by the respective teams to a charity of their choice. The Kings donated $29,374 to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, while the Avalanche donated $13,876 to Kroenke Sports Charities.
The Kings were also the top trending topic worldwide on Twitter during the majority of the game.
Game Highlights From NHL Video On YouTube
Frozen Royalty by Gann Matsuda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. You may copy, distribute and/or transmit any story or audio content published on this site under the terms of this license, but only if proper attribution is indicated. The full name of the author and a link back to the original article on this site are required. Photographs, graphic images, and other content not specified are subject to additional restrictions. Additional information is available at: Frozen Royalty – Licensing and Copyright Information.
Frozen Royalty’s Comment Policies
frozenroyalty.net 
I didn’t take part in the twitter stuff, but found the info in your article was interesting. Not a bad 1rst game for Greener, I’m glad he’s back. Too bad Richardson wasn’t drafted by Pheonix, and Calgary also, we could of used a hat trick there as well.