LOS ANGELES -- Two beer-league players lugged their hockey bags to their designated ice sheet when one of them suddenly stopped, gazing out on the ice where the Los Angeles Kings were having a preseason practice.
"That's him. In the gray. On the far right. You see him?"
They gawked for a moment at Ilya Kovalchuk, whose presence at the Toyota Center in El Segundo did have a mythic quality.