A friend who was listening to the L.A. Kings telecast from St. Louis the other night called to tell me the team's longtime, much-honored and very mild-mannered broadcaster, Bob Miller, lit into the Los Angeles Times during the game. The subject of the paper came up and Miller observed that there probably wouldn't be much in the next day's Times, because there never is anymore. He apparently wasn't talking just about the hockey coverage, but that could have been on his mind. The Times didn't send a reporter on the Kings' road trip to St. Louis and Nashville, or the Ducks' swing through Canada last week. That's two local sports teams, no longer covered on the road by the Los Angeles Times -- LAT readers got AP instead, same as in the community and college papers. But of course the Tribune is even threatening to quit AP. If you're a hockey fan in OC, now you read the Register -- its Dan Wood did travel with the Ducks.

Not just the LAT: The Daily News doesn't travel with the Kings anymore either, even though the blog by former beat writer Rich Hammond is one of the paper's most popular. I'm guessing that means a traveling media corps now of zero.