The Fifth Liners

Today it was announced that Los Angeles Kings backup goalie Ben Scrivens has been traded to the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for a 2014 third round draft pick, meanwhile regular goalie Devan Dubnyk has also been traded to the Nashville Predators in exchange for forward Matt Hendricks! Trading Scrivens is either a stroke of genius by Edmonton or pure silliness by LA because this player has been one of the finds of the season since he deputised so superbly for regular Kings goalie Jonathan Quick back in November, and so far he holds a record of 7-5-4 with a 1.97 GAA! This also included 10 shutouts and two first star performances (one of which I witnessed against the Rangers at the Garden). Being Quick's backup is a bit like being Petr Cech's number two at Chelsea, which is unless something drastic happens, you don't even consider leaving the bench!  So in that light, this move will give the guy game time, which he is not assured of at LA. But also it weakens the Kings b...

After emerging from a tense couple of hours in the cinema watching Tom Hanks cope with being hijacked by pirates in 'Captain Phillips' I found Mike's question of the week on my phone which read, " Pekka Rinne is going to miss 4 weeks due to Injury, how much will this affect his teams performance?" The two time Veniza trophy nominee has proven to be a wall in net for the Nashville Predators since arriving in 2005 and so far he holds a win/loss rate of 153-83 and impressively holds a save percentage of .920! Rinne has without question been the most important factor of the Predators over the last few years and has led them to no less than 8 visits to the Playoffs. But with the team no losing him, it will either be a time for his backups to sink or swim and now Nashville has the worrying issue that both Carter Hutton and Magnus Hellberg do not have any NHL experience under their belts. Hutton briefly was called up to the Chicago Blackhawks during their Stanle...