Frozen Royalty: Pete Demers Goes From Stick Boy To 34 Years With LA
If you’ve been a fan of the Los Angeles Kings, you know the name Pete Demers very well. There hasn’t been a lot written about him but he is a legend in Kings world. Gann Matsuda got a chance to catch up with Pete in an awesome interview about his career. This is definitely a must read!
LOS ANGELES — He never scored a goal in the National Hockey League, but was always at the players bench. He never made a pad save, blocked a shot, or threw a body check on NHL ice, but he was a bigger part of the Los Angeles Kings than most would probably give him credit for.
To be sure, after 34 years and 2,632 consecutive games with the Los Angeles Kings, retired trainer Peter Demers, arguably, the Dean of professional hockey trainers, past and present, left a huge, indelible mark on the franchise.
Of course, those who remember Demers, who retired following the 2005-06 season, have probably seen him behind the bench at a game, or when he has had to run out onto the ice to care for an injured player. But few know much more than that, not only about Demers himself, but also about all the duties and responsibilities of an athletic trainer for a professional hockey team, work that relatively few people ever get to see.
With this story about how he got his start in professional hockey, Frozen Royalty begins an exclusive series, spanning several months, on Demers and his 41-year career as an athletic trainer in professional hockey. The series will look at the job of the athletic trainer and how it has evolved over the past forty years, his memories of the different “eras” of Kings hockey, his thoughts on how the game has changed over the years in terms of conditioning, nutrition, treatment of injuries, and the like, a day in the life of an athletic trainer, working for former owner Jack Kent Cooke, how things changed for the franchise when Wayne Gretzky was acquired by the Kings, memories of the 1992-93 playoff run to the Stanley Cup Finals, the hazards he faced on the job, the circumstances surrounding his retirement, and much, much more.
Read the rest on Frozen Royalty.
