Los Angeles Kings: Getting Physical At Development Camp

During Gann Matsuda of Frozen Royalty‘s time at development camp this weekend, he got a chance to visit some of the tougher new additions to the LA Kings prospect pool. This is some good insight into what is, right now, an area of opportunity for Los Angeles.

EL SEGUNDO, CA — The Los Angeles Kings 2009 Development Camp for their young prospects. which ended on July 12, was rather different from camps held in previous years for several reasons.

One was the fact that only three days of the week-long camp were open to the public and the media to allow the young players to better focus on the task at hand.

But another more striking reason was that compared to previous camps, there seemed to be a greater intensity during both the scrimmages and the practice sessions and much of that may have been due to the fact that the Kings have brought in a number of prospects who not only are capable of playing a physical brand of hockey, but their toughness and fierce, competitive nature extends into their psyche as well, something that has been somewhat lacking throughout the Kings’ system.

One such player is their first round pick (fifth overall) in the 2009 National Hockey League Entry Draft, Brayden Schenn, a wet-behind-the-ears seventeen-year-old center from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

“The one thing about this guy is that his number one attribute is his competitiveness,” Kings President/General Manager Dean Lombardi at the draft in Montreal on June 26. “He’s a playoff-type player. I know that’s what [Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian] Burke saw in him and that’s certainly what we liked about him.”

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