Jon Hover of Mayor’s Manor and Kings of the Podcast joined TFP Hotstove on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio with Dennis Bernstein, Dave Pagnotta and Ryan Paton on Saturday. Hoven was asked about the type of player the Los Angeles Kings are looking for on defense, since he doesn’t think Darnell Nurse is a good fit, and what else they could do on the blueline.
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Dave Pagnotta: “So you mentioned D. We talked about center, we talked about other positions, but you talked about D a few times without (Darnell) Nurse. What do you think they need to do, and what type of guys do they need to bring in? Not necessarily that specific player, but the type of player that you feel can benefit this club on that blue line.”
Jon Hoven: “Yeah, (Peter) Laviolette tried to talk about this a little bit. They were kind of like fencing around the edges, about how you need to be able to get offense from your defenseman, and that doesn’t come in the form of goals and assists, and showing up on the score sheet. But you need guys who can move the puck and at least be part of the offense.
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He’s seen a better approach offensively or offensively from guys like Joel Edmundson throughout his career, but when guys come to Los Angeles, and they’re asked to play defense first. We used to joke that Darryl Sutter would scare people, and that thought still holds. So, what they need to do is they need to be able to move the puck, and then, all the other things we mentioned earlier, block shots, be physical.
We know that the LA Kings, like most teams in the National Hockey League, love big players. So if you were to draft a perfect player for them, you know, 6’3″ or 6’4″ that kind of thing. What they do goes back to Drew Doughty’s argument.
They can’t change their four defenders, can they? It’s about six of their starting quarterbacks, so you just go through the lineup, and you say, “Okay, okay, Mike Anderson isn’t going anywhere, Brandt Clarke isn’t going anywhere.
Two, so you are left with four more. I would say Cody Ceci, even though the fans were all over Cody Ceci all last year, and Holland was heavily criticized for the contract he signed last summer. I just don’t see Cody Ceci as a commodity this particular summer.
I think if you’re from Holland, his move will probably give him one more year, at least half a year, to try to redeem himself, and then talk about it closer to next summer with a buy or trade or whatever you have to do.
So there’s another guy who’s not on the board. Which really leaves you back to the Drew Doughty conversation, and then you have Brian Dumoulin, and you have Joel Edmundson. Also, Edmundson and Dumoulin are probably the two most traded contracts they have. For there to be help there, besides Doughty.
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And if Doughty moves, then there’s another layer to what we’re talking about, Dave, because if you say what kind of player they need right now. He’s not just someone who can move the puck, now he’s someone who can get on the score sheet, because Brandt Clarke might be the only defenseman with an offensive mind. So they’re going to need someone who can help run the second power play unit, and those types of things.
So, again, it all goes back to Drew Doughty, but I’ll throw a name out there. Don’t be surprised if you’re surprised to see (Vladislav) Gavrikov return to Los Angeles this summer.
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