After taking Sunday off, the Kings returned to the ice this morning and training camp has resumed.
“We’ll be back at it Monday,” coach Todd McLellan said heading into Sunday’s day off. “We’ll shift the groups around a little bit and then we’ll continue to scrimmage every day but in controlled environments, controlled situations, where we’re working on our game.”
We had asked McLellan for some highs and lows coming out of the first three days of camp and here’s what he had to say:
“The high was just getting back on the ice. The first day there were so much almost nervous energy. Guys had a lot of gas in the tank, gas they needed to burn off. It was fast. It was somewhat out of control at times. I think the second day was the most control the scrimmage was. And the third day is when the fatigue factor came in, there was more risk, there was more hope plays made, but it wasn’t surprising and it’s something that we thought would happen based on on the energy level as it diminished.
“As far as players go. I think for the most part everybody showed up ready to play and in relatively good condition. I was asked in the coaches room, ‘What did you like the most about the three days?’ For me, it was organically, the veteran players and the players that have been in the organization, doing things that we haven’t even reminded them of – whether it be a certain type of forecheck in the neutral zone, breakouts, words we use, even hearing them on the bench, that was really encouraging for us. I think that gives us an indication that structurally we’re lot further along than we were after three days last year. It doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods, we’ve got a lot of work left, but that would be a positive.”
Later, he talked more about what to expect this week in camp…
“We have to make some moves so that we can begin to work on important parts of the game – power play, penalty kill. You can’t do that when your players are spread out in two different groups. We’ll work on power play and we need the units together, we’ll work on penalty kill and we need the units together. I told them this, ‘If you’re in Group A and you think you’re on the National Hockey League team, you’re dreaming right now because we’re nowhere near making final decisions. If you’re in group B, and and you feel like you didn’t make it, shame on you because that’s not the case. We will move players around depending on what we’re working on day-to-day. We legitimately could have a 29-man roster when you think of 23 and 6 on the taxi squad, so if somebody ends up being a little disappointed, and and is dragging their lip a little bit, it’s probably going to cost them in the long run. I don’t think that will happen, but you never know.”
Team A
Alex Iafallo – Anze Kopitar – Dustin Brown
Adrian Kempe – Gabe Vilardi – Martin Frk
Austin Wagner – Blake Lizotte – Jeff Carter
Trevor Moore – Mike Amadio – Matt Luff
Carl Grundstrom – Lias Andersson – Sammy Fagemo
Jaret Anderson-Dolan
Olli Maatta – Drew Doughty
Mikey Anderson – Matt Roy
Kale Clague – Sean Durzi
Kurtis MacDermid – Sean Walker
Jonathan Quick
Cal Petersen
Team B
Mikey Eyssimont – Aidan Dudas – Tyler Madden
Boko Imama – Rasmus Kupari – Akil Thomas
Drake Rymsha
Jacob Moverare – Austin Strand
Daniel Brickley – Mark Alt
Marcus Phillips
Jacob Ingham
Troy Grosenick
A full roster can be downloaded / printed here.
More information about training camp can be found below.
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