The Kings have announced another deal: a fifth-round pick from Tampa for Jason Ward, who played all of seven games in L.A. after coming from New York in the Sean Avery deal. TSN is now reporting the full details of the Norstrom trade: The Kings send Norstrom, Konstantin Pushkarev, a third-round pick and a fourth-round pick to Dallas for Jaroslav Modry, Johan Fransson, a first-round pick in 2008, and second- and third-round picks this year.

At 1:12 p.m., three hours after the deal was first reported, the Ducks finally announced the May-for-Wall trade.

Well, it appears to be official: The Kings have indeed traded Mattias Norstrom, their team captain and one of the truly classy individuals in the game — but to the Dallas Stars, not the Ducks. A big pickup for Dallas. What the Kings have gotten back has not yet been reported.

Late trades are still trickling in, and this is a big one: Edmonton has traded Ryan Smyth, the face of the Oilers and one of the game's definitive power forwards, to the New York Islanders for two players and a first-round pick. That's an official throw-in-the-towel move for Edmonton, nine points out of a playoff berth, as well as a sign the Oilers had determined they couldn't sign Smyth, a free-agent-to-be, and wanted to get something in return. Expect major outrage in Edmonton.

It's been well over an hour since TSN reported the Brad May trade, and still nothing from the Ducks, suggesting another deal might have been pulled off. (We're now 30 minutes past the deadline). Surfing around the net, I see two reports that the Kings have traded defenseman and team captain Mattias Norstrom, which would be a bit of a stunner, even with the team in full sell-off mode. It would be particularly stunning if he goes to the Ducks, which is what hockeybuzz.com is reporting.

Passing on the bigger names available — probably not too surprising, given the prices they were commanding — the Ducks went for the minor tweak of the roster at the NHL trade deadline. According to TSN.ca, they’ve acquired 14-year veteran Brad May from Colorado for goalie Michael Wall, who was with the Ducks part of this season when Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Ilya Brzygalov were hurt.
The Ducks have not yet confirmed the trade.
May is described by the web site sportsnet.ca as having good size (he’s 6-2, 220) and using it effectively in the corners, and playing a physical, in-your-face style. He’s also described as a “solid leader in the dressing room.� On the negative side, he’s been injury prone, missing most of this year with a shoulder injury and playing at least 70 games just twice in the last 10 years. He’s not a top-six type forward, having 275 points in 868 career games, but he certainly brings toughness, with over 2,000 career penalty minutes.
The Ducks had been rumored to be interested in Florida’s Todd Bertuzzi — a rumor that made sense, given his links to general manager Brian Burke when both were in Vancouver — but Bertuzzi, injured all year, has gone to Detroit, pending league approval. This spares the Ducks a good deal of controversy, given Bertuzzi, was the player who ended the career of Colorado’s Steve Moore with a cheap-shot hit in 2004. Bertuzzi served a 20-game suspension for that play and eventually entered a guilty plea to an assault charge in a Canadian court. In my book a lifetime ban would have been more appropriate.
Among the Ducks’ rivals, the biggest move appears to have been made by San Jose, which acquired Billl Guerin from St. Louis for two players and a first-round draft pick, after getting Craig Rivet from Montreal on Sunday.

LOS ANGELES — Remember when a Lakers-Celtics game really meant something?
Hold on to that memory. It may be a while before it happens again.
This game had about the same amount of juice as the preliminary D-League game between the D-Fenders and, um, whoever. The Lakers, who had lost six straight and are without three players, toyed with the Celtics, winning 122-96.
If the Celtics’ league-worst 13-41 record doesn’t tell you how badly this series has sunk, these factoids might drive the point home:
— Aaron McKie, who had played five minutes for the Lakers all season, played 12.
— Shammond Williams, who had played in just 11 games, was the second man off the bench and scored six points, matching his season total.
— The Boston roster includes guys named Ryan Gomes, Rajon Rondo, Tony Allen, Leon Powe and Kendrick Perkins. Trot that list of names before most casual sports fans and they’ll figure it’s the starting rotation for the Washington Nationals, or maybe the Washington Generals.
— As a Celtic reserve, Michael Olowokandi has done the next-closest thing to putting his career in the federal witness protection program.
— And in perhaps the strongest indication how far this matchup has fallen, I had a courtside media seat.
There are a grand total of 13 courtside seats for the print media at Lakers’ games, all along the baseline nearest the Lakers bench. These days, I’m usually in the third row of media seating; occasionally, I’m as far back as the fifth. In seven years covering the Lakers, I believe I’ve had a courtside seat five times, including one other game this season. It happens when media-credential demand is very, very light.
Never, back in the 80s when this was THE rivalry in the NBA, could anyone have imagined this game would fit that description.

LOS ANGELES — In case you haven’t noticed, the Lakers are getting a little thin on the front line, what with snowboard champion Vladimir Radmanovic joining Luke Walton, Kwame Brown and Chris Mihm on the sidelines.
They are, in fact, so thin that the prospect of adding Scottie Pippen — 41-year-old, retired-for-three-seasons Scottie Pippen — are not something Phil Jackson is about to dismiss out of hand.
“I have not talked to him,� Jackson said before Friday’s game with Boston. “I anticipate I will at some point talk to Scottie.�
And what does he want to ask Pippen?
“Can he play? Personal assessment,� Jackson said, adding that the Lakers would have to see for themselves.
Jackson called the Pippen possibility something the Lakers would “have to� consider.
“We’re sitting here a little bit short on the forward end of it,� he said. “It’s a perfect combination of situations for us — a guy with that kind of experience, even the rapport he has with this team, having been at our training camp last year, makes sense.�
And, of course, there’s no need to teach Pippen the triangle. He ran it under Jackson for six championship seasons in Chicago.
Scottie Pippen a Laker? Now? Who would have thought it?
Thank their snowboarding forward for creating yet another plot twist in the never-a-dull-moment story that is Lakers basketball.

NEW YORK — Journey’s End, the revival of a 1928 British play about World War I, is in no small part about the tension of waiting for something to happen in wartime. So it is wholly appropriate that, for the audience, there’s a scene of incredible tension that comes with a completely empty stage.
The play is set in a single bunker, and at that moment, there’s a key battle going on, and as you hear the sounds of war, you have no idea which characters are coming back. The wait seems endless.
That you care so much during that wait speaks to the effectiveness of this play, which focuses on four British officers. The author, R.C. Sherriff — who was launched into a successful writing career by this play — did not see it, according to a recent New York Times article, to be an antiwar play, but about the nobility of what men did in war.
It can, of course, be both.
I thought it was excellent, well-written and acted, and spoke to wartime themes as relevant today as they were when it was first performed. So did the people who were sitting next to me. But there were people sitting behind me who found it dated, and felt it was too long.
Since this was the next-to-last preview — the official opening is Thursday — a number of prominent reviewers were in Tuesday’s crowd. It will be interesting to see where their opinions fall — and if audiences want to see a war drama while the U.S. labors in Iraq.

NEW YORK — I’m dragging a little bit tonight, so I’ll be brief: “Spring Awakening.� Go.
What? Too brief?
OK, OK. My Broadway taste runs more to plays than musicals (not to say I didn’t love the big musical comedies, like “Spamalot� and “The Producers,� but there’s so much buzz about the musical “Spring Awakening,� I decided to take a look. Good call.
Excellent music, creative staging … so-so story (you can see where it’s going two miles in advance), but it’s forgiveable because a.) It’s done so well, b.) it stays away from most of the musical conventions that were spoofed in “Gutenberg� and c.) it’s bringing young crowds into the theater.
That last point may be the most important.
“Spring Awakening� is a rock musical — Duncan Sheik, who had a big debut CD a few years ago, as well as the inescapable hit “Barely Breathing,� wrote the music, with book and lyrics by Steven Sater — and it also has a story that appeals to a younger audience, since it’s about sexual repression in 1890s Germany.
Oh, yes it is.
Really, though, it’s about the eternal gap between parents and children, and parental discomfort in dealing with their kids’ sexuality. This — as well as the music — probably explains the atypical youthfulness of the crowd, which is a wonderful thing. There’s an energy in the audience that’s lacking all too often on Broadway. And, having been to far too many shows where I felt like I was the only person under 60 in attendance, it’s nice to see something that might help create the next generation of theatergoers.
There's much more to say about this show, but, as I said at the beginning, it's late. Just seek it out if you have the chance.

NEW YORK — Can something be incredibly dumb and remarkably smart at the same time? The answer is yes if the subject is “Gutenberg: The Musical,� an endearing little off-Broadway show playing at the Actor’s Playhouse in the Village.
If “The Little Dog Laughed� was a two-hour treatise on cynicism, “Gutenberg� is the reverse: a show about the two most naïve individuals in the history of show business, presenting the backer’s audition for their new musical about the inventor of the printing press. As such, these two, accompanied by a lone pianist, perform the entire show — all 30-plus parts. Each time they switch characters, they also put on a new baseball cap labeled with the character’s name.
It is, of course, perhaps the worst musical this side of “Springtime for Hitler;� the songs have lyrics like, “The sun is rising in the east/the bread is rising with the yeast.� But it’s also a perfect sendup of every Broadway musical convention — and the tunes are really catchy, which makes it possible to sit through these intentionally abysmal songs and laugh, rather than simply wince.
Given that it takes just three people to perform — and that the laughs are almost never-ending — I predict a long life for this play in small theaters everywhere. And I look forward to a planned cast recording, so I can thrill again to a song about biscuits, and a lament entitled “Wish I Could Go To Hell.�

NEW YORK — During my last trip to New York, the Broadway opening of the play, “The Little Dog Laughed,� previously an off-Broadway success, drew excellent reviews, particularly for lead actress Julie White. I didn’t have the opportunity to see it then, but I did today, the day before its run ends. All I can do is reinforce the praise, particularly for White, who plays an incredibly venal, amoral and manipulative Hollywood agent. (Forgive me; I know that’s redundant.)
By the way, I should note this is a comedy. A dark one, to be sure, but since many so-called “black comedies� are distinguished mostly by the absence of laughs, I should note this features a cascade of huge laughs.
Briefly, it’s the story of a rising Hollywood star (described by one of the other characters as “a boy-next-door type, if the person next door happens to be dashing�) who wants to come out of the closet, and the agent’s efforts to stuff him back in. Tom Everett Scott plays the actor, but there’s no doubt the play belongs to White, said to be a front-runner for the Tony. I can see why. It’s not a part to be played timidly — White’s character is the personification of all that’s wrong with Hollywood, and could not be more politically incorrect — and she doesn’t; she’s over the top, and in this case, that’s exactly where she needs to be.
I had a great time and would recommend the show wholeheartedly if not for the slight detail of its immediate closure. All I can tell you is this: Should it happen to show up in L.A., particularly with White, I’d go see it again, and take friends with me.

NEW YORK — Back when I started this blog, I said I planned to write about subjects other than sports, that’s certainly going to be true this week: No sporting events are on the agenda in New York, where I’m doing a week of pet- and apartment-sitting on the Upper West Side. But if you’re interested in music and theater, you might want to keep checking in.

Anyway, tonight’s event was a concert by Rickie Lee Jones at the Theater of the Society for Ethical Culture, a lovely little venue at 64th and Central Park West. This was an early date on the tour in support of her newest album, “The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard;� the tour comes into Los Angeles March 1.

Rickie Lee is one of those artists who follows her creative impulses with very little regard to audience expectations, and the new CD is not necessarily one to appeal to those who loved earlier like her debut album or “Pirates.� It rocks more than she has in a while, and includes several songs that were written as improvisations, and aren’t necessarily catchy, or even particularly melodic. It is by no means my favorite work of hers, but it certainly does have its moments.

Knowing this going in, I had fairly mild expectations: I expected to hear a lot of the new material, but hoped to hear at least a few of the older songs. And so it was: 12 songs of the 13 songs from the new album (one, Falling Up, was one of the show’s high points) with a smattering of better-known material, mostly in a five-song solo piano set to open the show.

It was not the set list I would have chosen, but if you follow artists with eclectic tastes and motivations, you have to respect when they move in different directions, and be willing to follow along. Those who did that Friday night enjoyed the show; the people who were yelling for “Satellites� or “Chuck E’s in Love� were probably disappointed. (Certainly, Jones made it clear she wasn’t pleased with those requests.)

On the whole, an interesting show with some great moments, but not a great show overall, and far more for devoted fans than more casual ones.

LOS ANGELES — In case you haven't noticed, the Lakers aren't a particularly good team right now. More and more, it's clear how much they miss Luke Walton.

Including the Charlotte game where he was injured, having played just 18 minutes, the Lakers are 3-8 without him. Phil Jackson made it clear he's not happy with the way the team is running the offense, and Kobe Bryant said Walton's absence has a lot to do with that, given his knowledge of the triangle (plus, of course, his pass-first mentality, a rare thing in the NBA.)

Walton is also valuable for his willingness to speak his mind and his ability to articulate his thoughts. (hopefully, it has not become politically incorrect to apply that term to an athlete). At Monday's practice, he bluntly said the Lakers were "awful" on their 3-5 road trip.

"We had games where we’d go five or six minutes without scoring," he said. "In the triangle offense, you should always be getting open shots and easy buckets. That happened, and then we started not playing any defense."

Walton's injury is actually a losing proposition on two fronts: He's not on the court, and Vladimir Radmanovic is. But then, that's another issue for another time.

A closing note to my reader, whoever you may be: I'll be on vacation until Feb. 23. I'll almost certainly have some blog entries in the interim, but I don't really know how many.

LOS ANGELES — Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems a number of reporters feel Kobe Bryant has an extra motivation for tonight's game because he was suspended for the recent Knicks game in New York. I don't see it — why would he feel any particular need to go off against the Knicks because of something the league did?

Kobe — who happened to talk to reporters before the game, which is fairly rare — certainly didn't sound like a guy carrying a grudge.

"I just go out there and play," he said, "I just play a style of basketball that we require, and how (we need) to get a W. That’s the most important thing. It doesn’t matter to me to go out there and prove anything to the Knicks or make any type of statement. What statement would I be making?"

Phil Jackson also was caught a bit off-guard by this particular line of pregame thinking.

"I was surprised to hear that some people were making an issue out of that, because he didn’t play in the last Knick game," Jackson said in his pregame briefing. "This isn’t like there’s a rivalry out there, or simply because the NBA houses its offices in New York that he has to prove a point. They see all the games. So it’s not any more important than any other."

Seems logical to me. We'll see how it plays out.

Channel-surfing at home, I've happened upon a replay telecast of an Italian soccer game (Chievo Verona — "The Flying Donkeys," one of the great team nicknames ever — against Inter Milan) which happens to be one of the empty-stadium games played today, part of the response to the recent killing of a policeman in a riot outside a soccer stadium. (If you missed it, fans are not allowed into stadiums which fail to meet more stringent security regulations. The stadium in Verona is one such facility. At the moment, fans are allowed at only six of the 20 Serie A stadiums.)

A game without fans is definitely one of the stranger things I've ever seen. Inter scored a goal in the first minute, and there was, of course, no reaction, save for that in the broadcast booth. (As one of the announcers noted, it was possible to hear the sound of the net rippling as the ball went in.) You can also hear every word yelled on the field, which may offer a quick lesson in Italian cursing.

No doubt strong action was needed, given the rampant violence surrounding some Italian soccer, but I really wonder how effective this regulation can be. After all, the policeman in Catania was killed in violence outside the stadium, which was going on during the game. And even during this televised game, the announcers have noted they can occasionally hear chants from fans gathered outside. Who's to say there's not just as much prospect for trouble outside, even when people aren't allowed inside?

LOS ANGELES — A few final thoughts on the Bruins' 70-65 victory:

It's been a few years since I was at a UCLA-USC game at Pauley — or maybe longer, because I don't remember an atmosphere like this. I have always thought the Pauley crowds were a bit sedate, at least by college standards, but the place was rocking tonight. Lots of fun. Wisely, the school still seats a lot of students down by the court, which is probably why Pauley seemed more electric than the Galen Center did for the earlier meeting. USC's students are kept at one end of the building. Then again, it's possible that having a media section surrounded by students skews the perception of the atmosphere a little bit. At USC, the woefully inadequate press area (which unfortunately reflects the new trend in arena construction) is at the opposite end of the building from the students.

Oh, and UCLA also deserves credit for having a public address announcer who doesn't go out of his way to draw attention to himself — which is in sharp contrast to the incredibly annoying Petros Papadakis, who does the P.A. at USC home games and would be more at home in the NBA with his overbearing style. (When it comes to public-address announcers, I'm very definitely a believer in the old school, which is to say guys who gave you the basic information you needed and otherwise shut up.)

The game itself did nothing to dispel the idea that the quality of this series is on the rise. The games have usually been good, even when both teams weren't; when both teams are — which seems like it could be the long-term trend — the series definitely takes on an added dimension.

LOS ANGELES — Miscellaneous thoughts at halftime, with USC leading 30-29:

With great energy in the building, there’s no doubt both teams are revved up for this — if anything, a little too revved up. Turnovers abound. UCLA’s Darren Collison had a man open on a fast break and threw the ball well over him and out of bounds, which still wasn’t the worst Bruin turnover. (That would be the pass by Arron Afflalo which hit an open man on the sideline, the problem being that open man was USC coach Tim Floyd.)

One basketball truism: the hotter the start for a team, the more inevitable the dropoff. So it was after USC went up 20-10, having scored on nine of 10 possessions (making 9 of 11 shots). The rest of the half, the Trojans were just 5 of 16 and committed nine turnovers; UCLA — despite its own turnover problems — could have had the lead if not for 6-of-11 free-throw shooting,

By the way, it’s about 800 degrees in here. Don’t know if that’s a bit of gamesmanship, a reflection of Pauley’s need for renovation, or simply a reflection of conditions up at the top of the arena, as opposed to way down there on the court.

Any postgame thoughts won’t be up until well after the game, since I’ll have a column to write.

LOS ANGELES — Pauley Pavilion is far from full — it's still 45 minutes until game time and this is L.A. after all — but the obligatory rivalry-type stuff is heating up nicely, since almost everyone in the building right now is a UCLA student.

The USC band has gotten an early start on the musical festivities — UCLA's musicians are still straggling in — and you can imagine the warm, enthusiastic reception for the night's first performance of "Conquest." This was immediately followed by a chant of "13-9, 13-9," which I suspect Bruin fans will be breaking out any time two schools meet, except perhaps in chess tournaments.

Most of the seats in Pauley's lower bowl had powder-blue t-shirts set out on them, so the arena should look decisively pro-Bruin for tonight's affair. Ticket classism and TV visibility being what they are, the people in the upper seats are not getting a free addition to their wardrobe.

Your hockey trade scorecard: So far, the Kings have shipped off one player who was a really good guy, and one who wasn't.

Feel free to guess which is which.

Craig Conroy, sent to Calgary a week ago, was one of the true media-friendly veterans in a sport that generally abounds with them. I'll always appreciate how, at the Torino Olympics, he always stopped to talk to me in the media area after the U.S. games, no matter how well or badly he played. (Other reporters, who didn't know him, quickly picked up on the fact he was quotable and cooperative, and he quickly became a focal point of media coverage.)

On the other hand, Sean Avery, shipped to New York this afternoon, was one of the rare not-so-good-guys. To his credit, he did get a little smarter about how to deal with the media this season, which is to say he just stopped talking to reporters. Given how little he clearly thought of us, I don't think we minded too much, though the lack of those Avery-said-something-dumb-again controversies may have been missed by the beat writers.

It's essentially irrelevant what the Kings received for Avery. In terms of team chemistry, this is almost certainly addition by subtraction. Not sure he's the ideal candidate to play in the media capital of the Western World; it will be interesting to see how that works out.

I may be encroaching on the territory of my colleague Joe Curley here, but I wanted to note that there's something extraordinary going on in Italy right now.

In the wake of rioting outside of a Serie A soccer game Friday in Sicily — rioting in which a policeman was killed and 70 to 150 people (depending on the report) were injured — Italian soccer has been shut down.

This weekend's games: postponed. Two international "friendlies:" cancelled. And there's no word when games will be resumed; remarkably, the president of Italy's players' association has called for a one-year suspension for the escalating violence to truly be addressed. (I can't imagine a circumstance in which anyone involved in American professional sports would urge a sport to be shut down for a year, but then, I can't quite imagine sports-related rioting as such a regular part of the landscape, either.)

Part of the reason I find this so interesting is that I'm always interested in sports that move beyond sports and have a greater cultural significance; part of it is that I love Italy so much and tend to follow major news stories there as best I can. And part of it is that I happened to be watching the Catania-Palermo game that led to all this on the Fox Soccer Channel — a game featuring a 40-minute delay as tear gas from the rioting outside the stadium wafted over the field — and I feel compelled to follow the story to its conclusion.

Whatever the reason, I suspect this is going to be a story worth following for some time.

The best English-language covering I've found so far is on this site (still being new to this, I'm not sure how to create a link, so you'll have to cut and paste the address):
http://www.channel4.com/sport/football_italia/news.html

LOS ANGELES — Tonight's announced attendance for the Kings and Blackhawks was 16,958 — still inflated, of course, but a late-arriving crowd did fill in the upper deck to an amazing degree (a mini-jersey giveaway helped).

As for the game, Chicago won 3-2 in overtime — but actually scored all five goals, deflecting two shots past its own goalie before three guys you never heard of combined for a goal at 57 seconds of the extra period. (For the record, Lasse Kukkonen scored, assisted by Denis Arkhipov and Tuomo Ruuto — a series of names that sound like nightmare draws in a game of Scrabble.)

LOS ANGELES — Hard to understate the electrifying lack of excitement in Staples Center tonight as the Kings play the Blackhawks in that long-awaited meeting of the 28th- and 29th-best teams in the NHL. Suffice it to say that up here in the hockey press box — closer to most orbiting satelllites than it is to the playing surface — you hear everything the players are yelling on the ice, even if you can't quite understand it. (Whether that's distance, the various languages in use — somehow, it takes players from 12 countries to create two rosters this bad — or the pronouncation problems inherent with missing teeth, I can't say.)

While there are vast tracts of empty seats downstairs, it will be interesting to see how close the announced attendance is to the capacity of 18,118. The upper deck has a surprising number of people, given the teams involved; given that attendance no longer indicates the number of people attending, but the number of tickets sold, the number will, of course, be misleadingly high, compared to the actual number of bodies in the building.