Jimmy Bramlett

The Clippers showed no love to the Lakers on the last NBA game before the All Star handing out a 125-101 beatdown on Valentine's Day.

The Ducks were not the first team to hand the Chicago Blackhawks their first loss in regulation, but they did the next best thing. They went to Chicago and won the game in a shootout 3-2.

Things are starting to look up for the Clippers and the Kings, but how long will it last? Injuries started piling on the Clippers. Chris Paul with the bruised knee. Chauncey Billups with tendinitis in his left foot. Blake Griffin with a strained left hamstring. That explains as they lost eight of 11 games including horrible losses to Toronto, Boston and Washington that just left you shaking your head.

Tuesday night saw two Los Angeles teams desperately needing wins getting them. It sounds strange to say that the Lakers were desperate for the win since they have gone 2-1 on this Grammy road trip entering play tonight. But coughing up leads in those three games and being four games under .500 makes every game crucial for the Lakers. This was especially true in Brooklyn tonight with tricky games in Boston, Charlotte (yes, Charlotte) and Miami set to close out the road trip.

Thanks to the Lakers and the Super Bowl, the spotlight was taken off the Clippers for a little bit. But as we rolled around today in our own preservative filled post-Super Bowl hangover of discarded pig intestines and processed dairy products and assorted amalgamations of sodium-enhanced legume mixtures, it was hard not to take a look at the Clippers tonight.

That was a painful hockey game to watch. There weren't any fights or broken bones (that I know of). There were no torn knee ligaments. The game just wouldn't end. Not in regulation, not in overtime, not even in the required three rounds of the shootout. In the eighth round of the shootout Simon Gagne couldn't win it for the Kings. Instead Sergei Kostitsyn did the honors for the Nashville Predators to give them a 2-1 victory, their first shootout victory in four chances this season.

What a difference a week makes. One week ago the Lakers finished up a completely woeful three-game road trip in Memphis losing their fourth straight game 106-93. The cries of "Trade Dwight!" and "Trade Pau!" and "Fire D'Antoni!" and "Kobe is a ballhog!" erupted in a symphony of cacophony throughout the Southland.

They thought they could. They thought they could. The game wasn't pretty. "It's not pretty," Simon Gagne confirmed. "We still have a lot of work to do." They do. Missed passes. Linemates skating at different speeds. Coverages busted. Pucks given away in the defensive zone. Five games into the new season things are still looking rough for the Kings. But once the final horn sounded, the scoreboard read a 3-2 shootout victory over the Vancouver Canucks.

It's a regional sports network! The Dodgers announced they will be launching their very own RSN SportsNet LA in an agreement with Time Warner Cable.

The game between the Kings and the Edmonton Oilers was a deep study of the rulebook, ineffective power-plays and patience. At times it was like watching the Lakers playing the Washington Wizards. Unfortunately for the Kings, the results are starting to look Laker-like as they fell to the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 in overtime.