Kings Of The Cup: L.A. Wins First Championship

The Los Angeles Kings are 2012 Stanley Cup Champions, and in L.A., fans have plenty of new heroes to celebrate. SB Nation’s Dirk Hoag breaks them all down for us.

Stick with our StoryStream for complete Stanley Cup Finals Game 6 coverage. For more on the New Jersey Devils, check out Devils blog In Lou We Trust. For more on the Los Angeles Kings, check out Jewels From The Crown and SB Nation Los Angeles.

Yep. That’s the front page of the sports section in Tuesday’s Newark Star-Ledger, summing up the Devils’ evening as succinctly as possible. Meanwhile, the front page of the Los Angeles Times tells quite the opposite story.

The Bakersfield Californian goes a little further:

More Stanley Cup coverage: All Game 6 coverage | The best photos from the Kings’ party

Via the Bergen Record:

The Devils surely want to keep Parise around this summer, and it’s definitely the biggest question as the defending Eastern Conference Champions enter the 2012-13 season. Parise signed a one-year deal one summer ago to stay with New Jersey and the team anointed him captain in the process, but the allure of big money elsewhere and the threat of financial issues with the Devils may bring him elsewhere.

Game 6 drew a 4.0/7 overnight rating, up 3 percent from Game 6 of the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals. It was the first game of the series to see bigger numbers than last year’s. It was a growth of 35 percent from Game 5’s overnight, which was previously the highest of the series.

In New York, the game drew a 5.0/8, just shy of Game 1’s series high (5.1), and pretty impressive, considering the Devils were pretty much out of the game by the end of the first period.

The Los Angeles Kings’ Stanley Cup win on Monday night wasn’t just their first in team history. It broke a 45-year-long dry spell and removed the club from the infamous “1967 club” of teams that haven’t won the Cup since that year.

Via Leafs blog Pension Plan Puppets, a cartoon via Battle of California’s Earl Sleek:

The Conn Smythe Trophy is awarded to the most valuable player of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. There is no easy way to judge this, as human nature will weigh the Stanley Cup Finals above all other series, even though a team has to win 12 games before it makes it that far.

It can be easy to identify a team’s best player through a playoff run. In this case, the Kings had so many players step up throughout the team’s magical playoff season that Quick’s consistency put him over the top of any of them.

But it wasn’t meant to be as L.A. clinched the Cup in the 6-1 rout.

Sure, the game wouldn’t be the same without possibly the greatest goalie to ever strap on the pads, but it’s even harder to imagine the Devils without Brodeur, New Jersey’s number one man between the pipes since the 1993-94 season.

With the best trophy in sports comes the best party in pro sports -- from the sheer childish joy of the players to the loving embrace of the people who helped get them there to the champagne-infused locker room celebration to, yes, the traditional player-by-player hoist of the Cup, hockey reached its climax on Monday night.

Let’s relive it with some of the best photos from the evening. Kings fans: You’ll wanna bookmark this.

NBC might be mad at him for it -- their wallets, at least -- but that’s just raw energy coming out right there. And he’s 100 percent right. Anybody watching that ceremony tonight understood exactly why the Cup is the greatest trophy in sports. It’s the toughest to win, but that makes it the most rewarding to win, too.

The Kings certainly made it look easy this year, though, steamrolling through the Stanley Cup Playoffs en route to their first title in team history. 45 years? Well worth the wait, Los Angeles.

All Bernier could do was sit in the locker room alone with the roar of the crowd alerting him of each deadly strike of a puck hitting the back of the net. Via the Bergen Record:

The Devils didn’t blame Bernier for the loss despite the magnified nature of his penalty and the direct result of his exit from the hockey game.

Kopitar, the still criminally unsung Slovenian star, could have easily won the Conn Smythe that was awarded to Quick as playoff MVP. Like his linemate Brown, Kopitar scored eight goals and 12 assists in these playoffs, a point-per-game pace to lead all scorers (Brown’s total was enhanced by two empty-net goals).

That’s no indictment of Quick; he was outstanding as he has been all year. Rather it’s an acknowledgment that while Quick carried a flawed team to the playoffs, that flawed team had figured its problems out by the time the postseason rolled around. Suddenly Quick wasn’t an absolute necessity for a poor team; he was a bonus for a dominant one.

Did you hear that? The Stanley Cup was carried out by its Keepers on Monday night at Staples Center. It was ceremoniously walked around the ice and placed on the presentation table to cheers from the capacity crowd. Then, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman continued his speech.

No boos.

The New Jersey Devils were still two wins away from actually winning a Stanley Cup this season but, entering Game 6, you knew that a win would almost theoretically lock up a title. Maybe not 100 percent, but the energy they’d have after reeling off three straight wins to climb out of an 0-3 hole, heading back home for Game 7 in Newark?

That’d be really tough for the Los Angeles Kings to overcome, but the Devils were unable to take advantage of the opportunity presented to them in Game 6 Monday night. The Kings won the game, 6-1, to clinch the Stanley Cup for the first time in team history, and the Devils didn’t even really come to play. Via In Lou We Trust:

Andrew Blankstein at the Los Angeles Times reports that the victory parade to welcome the Stanley Cup to Los Angeles will take place Thursday afternoon. The parade will begin at 12:00 p.m. PT and originate at 5th and Figueroa. The jubilant procession will travel south along Figueroa before coming to an end between the Staples Center and L.A. Live. It is recommended that you plan to arrive early to get a good viewing location.

Players, coaches and family members will reportedly be riding in double-decker buses, among other vehicles. More information about the parade will likely be available Wednesday.

The Kings are kings of the hockey world and, if you’re a fan like those at Jewels From The Crown, the long wait is now completely worth it.

Be sure to head over to Jewels From The Crown and SB Nation Los Angeles for celebration with other Kings fans, or just to stare at their party with jealous eyes.

Oh, and yes, Gagne almost dropped it.

They overcame more than just about any other Cup champion in history -- a coach being fired, barely squeaking in at the end of the season, beating the No. 1 seed in the West, the No. 2 seed in the West and the No. 3 seed in the West. They did it in impressive fashion and they are absolutely deserving Stanley Cup Champions.

After two setbacks in a row, the Los Angeles Kings looked vulnerable for the first time in the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs. But after throttling the New Jersey Devils 6-1 in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, the Kings have won the Stanley Cup for the first time, and did it while looking invincible.

Los Angeles also became the first No. 8 seed to win the Stanley Cup since the NHL began seeding by conference in 1994, and tallied an amazing 16-4 record en route to it.

We imagine this is what Keeper Of The Cup Phil Pritchard does non-stop for months, all in preparation for a night like tonight. He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t eat. Just forever polishing until he carries the Cup out to the presentation table after the Stanley Cup Finals each year.

Sykora got up gingerly and threw a punch at Brown after, so we won’t feel too sorry for him, but still a pretty unnecessary hit — which led with the elbow — from Brown.

The Kings look like they know it in their skating. The Devils look like they’re just prolonging the inevitable — damn that clock.

Backup linesman time! Pierre Racicot was injured in this collision with Devils defenseman Anton Volchenkov early in the second period, and as a result he’s been removed from the game.

Linesman Derek Amell has been waiting as a backup, and he’s in the game for the third period as a result. We imagine this will be … inconsequential.

… because that’s the only reason why he’d still have a flip phone from 1999.

It’s unfortunate and sort of understandable, but as the time ticks off the clock in Game 6, the Devils have gotten more and more frustrated with the Kings. It’s showing in their play. We’ll ignore the first period penalty that likely ended Steve Bernier’s season, but Ryan Carter and David Clarkson have allowed the emotions to boil over just a bit too far.

Here’s Carter crashing Jonathan Quick’s net a bit too strongly in the second period. He is, indeed, quite mad.

It didn’t come until the end of the second period, but the New Jersey Devils finally have a goal in Game 6 of the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals. Now they’ll need three more at least in the third period to erase the Los Angeles Kings’ 4-1 advantage and keep their hopes of hoisting the Cup alive.

It’s not much, but it’s more hope than New Jersey had before, because something is better than nothing.