Healthy Gagne hopes to lift Kings to Stanley Cup championship

NEWARK, N.J. - Simon Gagne last skated in an NHL game on Dec. 26, 2011.

From afar, Gagne has watched the last 5 months of the Los Angeles Kings' roller-coaster season - from squeaking into the playoffs as the West's eighth seed to cruising to the Stanley Cup final - unfold without him, missing the last 62 games with a concussion.

On April 19, Kings coach Darryl Sutter said he wasn't sure if Gagne was even in North America, in an attempt to clear up any lingering questions about the two-time All-Star's status.

Now, Gagne - one of the longest-tenured athletes in Philadelphia over the past decade - says he is ready to help Flyers teammates Mike Richards and Jeff Carter finish off what they could not in 2010 against Chicago.

"Things are good now," Gagne said on Tuesday at the Stanley Cup finals' media day at Prudential Center. "I've been feeling really good for a month now. I've been fully cleared from a medical standpoint, from the doctors and medical personnel, almost since the first game against Phoenix. Now, maybe I have a chance to play."

Gagne, 32, is ready. It's just a matter of whether Sutter will be willing to tinker with the healthy lineup that has brought him within four wins of Los Angeles' first Stanley Cup in its 45-year history.

This is not one of those miraculous returns from a concussion for one more shot at glory. Gagne says he has been skating for nearly 3 full months. The Kings had to keep winning to get him the opportunity to play again.

Gagne went to the conference finals with the Flyers on four different occasions, plus that 2010 trip to the finals that fell two wins short, so he doesn't feel like he would be parachuting in at the last second.

"I know exactly what the guys went through," Gagne said. "The way they feel physically and mentally, it's so fresh in my mind that I know exactly how they're feeling. Everything is so special."

For Sutter, at the helm of a once scoring-inept team, it may be hard to deny the opportunity to a hungry and talented leader like Gagne. He has nearly 300 career goals and seven playoff game-winners to his credit and one gaping hole on his resume.

"There isn't one day, especially at this point in the season, that I don't think about losing that Game 6 in overtime in Philly," Gagne said. "Until you go to the final, you don't understand how tough it is just to get there, to win it. It's something that's going to stay in my mind, hopefully, until someday I can change that."

Flyers forward Claude Giroux is just a few votes away from being on the next cover of EA Sports' NHL 13 video game. He knocked off Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin in the semifinals on Monday, and he'll now square off with Nashville goaltender Pekka Rinne.

More than 23 million votes have been cast on NHL.com. Giroux beat Los Angeles' Anze Kopitar in the second round and dispatched Montreal's P.K. Subban in the first round. Voting concludes on June 4.