Adam Oates is the New Jersey Devils assistant coach in charge of the power play, which was 2-for-20 against the New York Rangers heading into Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Final. It's entirely possible he will carry around this Ilya Kovalchuk goal in his wallet, showing it to complete strangers and telling them how gorgeous it is.

Watch the all five Devils get involved on their second goal of Game 6, with Ruslan Fedotenko in the box for tripping Ryan Carter.

That's some video game [expletive] right there.

For those keeping score at home, it was Adam Henrique to Peter Harrold at the top of the zone, as the Devils played the umbrella. Harrold waited out a Derek Stepan blocked-shot attempt and dished to Henrique, who sent a quick pass to David Clarkson in the slot. Rather than shoot, Clarkson dumped down to Dainius Zubrus, who had a wide-open seam in front of the crease. He passed to Kovalchuk who one-timed it past Henrik Lundqvist.

We don't want to say that power-play goal was a thing of beauty, but it was just named Miss New Jersey.

Preview: New York Rangers at New Jersey Devils, 8 p.m. ET

The Rangers and Devils head back to Newark for Game 6. Will the Rangers stave off elimination, just as they did in 1994? Here's the key: Michael Del Zotto (above, punching Alexei Ponikarovsky in the beak). The offensive defenceman is a minus-5 in this series, going even in 3 of them, and minus-2 and minus-3 in the Game 2 and Game 5 losses, respectively. The Rangers' top pairing looks to be slowing down -- totally natural considering the minutes they've played all year -- and if Del Zotto can't eat up some quality minutes behind them, the Rangers could be done tonight.

Evening reading:

• Alain Vigneault went on a French-language radio show earlier this week and confirmed that Roberto Luongo had requested a trade. Friday, Mike Gillis established that "he didn't mean what he said." Right. Got it. [Vancouver Sun]

• The definitive guide to playoff facial hair. [Five Minutes for Fighting]

• As it turns out, Hal Gill played the entire postseason on a broken tibia, which is sort of badass. But what blows me away is that I'm not entirely blown away by it -- this sort of things happens fairly often in hockey, reason a billion why hockey is awesome. [SB Nation]

• What sort of impact has Martin Brodeur's puckhandling had on the Rangers/Devils series? [Edmonton Journal]

• Sean McIndoe on why Maple Leafs fans still can't get over that missed call from the 1993 Western Conference finals. [Grantland]

• And finally, Mark Messier guarantees a Game 6 win after all:

Puck Buddy Comment of the Day: Frank Grimes, on John Tortorella's origin story, which included ground balls to the face:

This article has been up for an hour and I haven't read one good "balls to the face joke" yet. Make my Friday Puck Daddy!

No kidding. I expected more from all of you.

Bold prediction: Wysh has four heart attacks during the course of Friday night's game.

Conan O'Brien is an Easterner through and through. He was born in Massachusetts, and established himself with a late-night talk show filmed in New York. But, in June of 2009, when Conan took over for Jay Leno as the host of the Tonight Show, he packed up and moved to Los Angeles. The adjustment has been awkward at times. The man is still a New Yorker at heart.

But now we have definitive proof that he's beginning to think like LA media: his most recent tweet shows that he knows nothing about the Los Angeles Kings.

The @LAKings are playing the @PhoenixCoyotes? I wonder which city that shouldn't have a hockey team will win.

— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) May 25, 2012

Not a bad tweet, except for one small hiccup: the series has been over for days. Brad Doty, Slamson and the rest of the Sacramento Kings are just resting up now, awaiting their Stanley Cup Final opponent. None of this went unnoticed by the LA Kings' Conn Smythe-calibre Twitter account, which took the opportunity to make chump meat out of the maestro, zinging O'Brien on the fact that his humour doesn't translate to earlier timeslots:

@conanobrien Clearly, that joke wasn't meant for prime time. — LA Kings (@LAKings) May 25, 2012

The only thing that would have made this tweet better is if it were hashtagged with #hahaifoundanerror.

Then Bailey, the Kings' mascot, chimed in.

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It's late May. You've played three rounds of hockey. The bumps and bruises are there, but you're playing for the Stanley Cup, man.

The three teams left in the race for the Cup are all feeling the effects of playing an extra month and a half of hockey. And while the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers will be playing their 18th and 20th games of the playoffs (respectively) tonight, the Los Angeles Kings have breezed their way through three rounds with a meager 14.

The Rangers played that many through the opening two rounds and according to STATS, LLC., no Cup-winning team has ever played more than 18 games to get to the Final.

By eliminating the Vancouver Canucks in five games and the St. Louis Blues in four, the Kings are used to having time off between series. With eight days between Game 5 against the Phoenix Coyotes and Game 1 of the Final, is that too much rest for the Kings?

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Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.

• We love this photo from Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals. We also can't imagine how many people mistook Chad Smith of the Chili Peppers for Will Ferrell.

• Dominik Hasek, 47, would like to play in the NHL again. As a backup? As a training camp invitee? Doesn't say. But we'd love to see it happen. Preferably in Tampa Bay in a tandem with Dwayne Roloson, so he can have someone to reminisce with about the discovery of fire. [Malik]

• Steve Yzerman doesn't rule out trading for a goalie for the Tampa Bay Lightning: "My preference," Yzerman said Thursday night, "is to go with a little bit younger guy that maybe has a little less experience that can step up and play well for us now." [TB Times]

• Coveted NCAA prospect Justin Schultz is reportedly leaving Wisconsin, giving the Anaheim Ducks a 30-day window in which to negotiate exclusively with him before he joins the Leafs, errrr, becomes a free agent. [Ducks Blog]

• Rick Dudley has left the Toronto Maple Leafs for the Montreal Canadiens as an assistant GM. Tim Wharnsby of CBC on Dudley's mixed results. [CBC Sports]

• Joe Haggerty breaks down a Rick Nash the Boston Bruins scenario: "Fact: The Blue Jackets are asking for too much for Nash at this point. This hockey writer can only see the superstar winger coming to Boston if Columbus is willing to take on Krejci or Tim Thomas in exchange for their franchise cornerstone. That may or may not happen." [CSNNE]

• Glendale councilwoman calls Canadians interested in the Phoenix Coyotes' relocation "poachers." Mark Spector pounces. [Sportsnet]

• John Tortorella on Game 6: "I thought we were on our heels, and you have to give credit to Jersey, too, a little bit, for putting us on our heels. But I think as we've been going here, I think entering tonight's game we're in the right mindset and that's going to be very important for an important game." [NYDN]

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It's a (getttin' down on) Friday edition of Marek vs. Wyshynski beginning at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, and we're talking about the following and more:

Special Guest Stars: It's GAME SHOW FRIDAY!, as Quizmaster Wysh crafts a new edition of "Getting High." Also, Bobby Holik joins the show!

• In which Marek and Wysh revisit 1994 and Wysh's personal pain.

• Previewing Game 6 of the ECF.

• Should Rick Dudley be allowed to join the Habs?

• Puck Headlines and Talking Points

Question of the Day: What should matter more to the NHL for the final - good games or good ratings?

Email your answers to puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or tweet them with the hashtag #MvsW to either @jeffmarek or @wyshynski.

Click here for the Sportsnet live stream or click the play button above! Click here to download podcasts from the show each day Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or Feedburner.

Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

Things are going exceedingly well for the Los Angeles Kings lately.

They're in the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1993, when they needed four or five Hall of Famers (depending on if you count Rob Blake, and I do) and a virtual All-Star team to get there. They got there by beating the first-, second-, and third-seeded teams in the West. They beat them all with alarming ease, winning 12 of 14 games in a run of terrible efficiency not seen since the 1988 Edmonton Oilers won a Cup in 18 games.

They have done all of this despite suffering from something that would have ripped apart most teams' chances like a bird going through a jet engine, and brought considerable shame on the parties responsible.

Namely, two of the team's three highest-paid forwards haven't been especially good in terms of putting points on the board.

Mike Richards and Jeff Carter have a combined 20 points in 14 playoff games. That includes only eight goals, three of which came for Carter in Game 2 against Phoenix. Not great totals for two guys who combined are making just over $11 million against the cap, especially when Dustin Penner and Justin Williams both have comparable point totals (both of them having more than Carter's mere nine).

The narrative has been that this has been a season in which they proved their doubters wrong because they're not actively being detrimental to their teams, as they apparently were in Philadelphia, but that they need to pick up their individual games. And they could probably do that if not for the fact that Darryl Sutter is positively burying them at every opportunity.

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Think about the most cynical cynic in your life, or the curmudgeonliest curmudgeon. What percentage of their personality is an act? What percentage is authentic? Where does this worldview develop?

When you watch New York Rangers Coach John Tortorella and his natural comportment — short, intimidating answers with the media, screaming down the bench at players or opposing coaches — you can't help but wonder what influenced it. Did Tortorella emerge from the womb complaining about the doctors' treatment, sneering at an orderly who looked like Larry Brooks?

Craig Wolff of the Star-Ledger attempted to answer this with an origin story on John Tortorella that's rather terrific — speaking with his father, his former coaches and teammates back in high school and college.

On authenticity, Wolfe writes:

Posturing is not his thing, old coaches, friends, family and former teammates say. The fiery coach with darts for eyes, especially on display in the storm of the Stanley Cup playoff season in news conferences and behind the bench, is not contrived, they say.

But it was Tortorella's behavior in baseball and hockey as a young athlete that really gives you a sense of how demanding he is as an NHL coach.

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As you may recall, after the Phoenix Coyotes were eliminated by the Los Angeles Kings, the two teams combined for one of the most uncomfortable handshake lines ever. Rather than shake quickly and move on (standard etiquette in handshake lines and at public urinals), Martin Hanzal and Shane Doan gave an earful to Kings' captain Dustin Brown, who had gone unpenalized on a borderline collision with Michal Rozsival just moments before Dustin Penner's game-winner.

It was a decidedly uncomposed, unsportsmanlike moment for the Coyotes, but if some of the stuff they said in the locker room afterwards was any indication, they weren't exactly thinking clearly. Maybe we should give them a couple days to calm down, we all thought.

Well, it's been a couple days, and sure enough, cooler heads have indeed prevailed. On Thursday, Shane Doan admitted some regret to how heated things became in the handshake line, and explained what was said between he and Brown. Doan, from NHL.com:

"We went to do the handshake and he was trying to explain and I said "Not now!' then he said 'Come on' and tried again and I said "No, not right now,' and that was it, Doan said. "That's really all it was.

Doan added that he didn't swear or say anything disrespectful. Still, he regretted losing his composure in the moment.

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(Ed. Note: We're proud to welcome two of our favorite bloggers, Chuck and Pants from What's Up, Ya Sieve?, to the Puck Daddy fold as they author our weekly NHL Playoff Beard Watch every Thursday.)

By Chuck and Pants from What's Up, Ya Sieve?

The stage is nearly set for the ultimate NHL showdown. The Devils and Rangers battle it out at center stage while the Kings wait in the offing for their opponent to be named. It's a long, hard fight to be among the last teams standing. Every one inch is earned.

This week, we salute the beards of some Unsung Unshaven Heroes. Marquee name or rookie sensation, it doesn't matter what their contracts say now.

They fight on - and the proof of is all over their faces.

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