Since the L.A. Kings are out of the NHL Playoffs, maybe you have turned your attention to the AHL minor league affiliate, the Manchester Monarchs.
If you have or you have not, there is one thing you should know: Jordan Weal has been tremendous. It is not just this 10 game stand in the playoffs where he leads the league with 15 points in which he has been tremendous. This has been a trend with the 23-year old Weal since juniors.
Drafted in the third round of the 2010 NHL entry draft, Weal played four full seasons with the Regina Pats of the WHL. Two of those four seasons he scored over 100 points, and the other non-rookie season he had he logged 96 points. Two of those seasons he had 40+ goals. Oh, he was also an alternate captain.
His AHL career has been equally as impressive given the step up in competition. With 70, and 69 points respectively in his last two seasons at the AHL, he has been the Monarchs best players.
So why is he 23 and yet to receive an NHL game? He did get called up on the last day of the season...but was a healthy scratch. Nevertheless, where has he been?
Well, Jordan Weal is 5'9".
Unfortunately, to some more archaic thinkers of the NHL, that damns he and a lot of other players for almost the entirety of their careers. Size seems to be everything with a lot of teams. The Kings are not strangers to this concept. The idea that you "Can't teach size" is very much true. However, there are a lot of very very good hockey players out there who don't have the size, but they certainly have the ability. Sometimes you cannot teach ability. For every small player who cannot cut it in the NHL there is probably a big player who cannot cut it either. Yet, when compared side to side, you have to wonder if most NHL scouts would pick the bigger player. The answer is probably.
In these 2015 playoffs and in this 2014-15 regular season we have been treated to some wonderful performances by players who are undersized and by all accounts were undervalued by teams.
Tyler Johnson. If you do not know the name by now then I question if you have been paying attention at all to the NHL the last two years! The 24-year old is also 5'9" and a hefty 180 pounds. That is very small by league standards. He went undrafted in 2009-10, and was unsigned by an NHL team until Tampa took a plunge in 2011. Despite being a 100 point player and a USA World Junior Championship competitor, no one wanted to take the risk. After a rookie campaign of 50 points, Johnson is coming of a 40+ assist season and a 70+ point season in his sophomore year. He has had a long battle to the NHL where a lot of people have doubted him because of his 5'9" stature. Craig Custance did a very solid article on Johnson for ESPN, and it is definitely worth checking out his full and detailed story.
Yzerman and company thought outside the box in a way, and they did something few teams do these days: They took an offensively gifted, yet undersized player, and played him in an offensive role. Go figure, it worked.
It also worked for Johnson's undersized linemate in Nikita Kucherov. Although Kucherov stands at a much more prominent 5'11", he has still been criticized for his lack of size coming through the ranks. Can we say that size matters anymore?
What about Johnny Gaudreau? 5'9", fourth round selection, took the NHL by storm with a tremendous rookie campaign this season. A Boston College standout, who was not held out of the lineup due to his lack of size. Yes, the lack of size has detractors, but it does not take away from the fact that he is quite a hockey player.
Part of the reason Pavel Datsyuk slipped to the sixth round in 1998 was due to his smaller stature.
Marty St. Louis. Enough said.
You can go over time and find tons of small players who were undervalued for their draft position.
That is the case with most of these guys. They are all good hockey players. Some of them exceptional hockey players. However, due to the remnants of the dead puck era where speed was limited, clutch and grab was excessive, and offense was down, we still have a thought process that hinges on "Undersized". Teams believe that because hockey is a physical sport, that you need physical players. That is becoming more and more untrue as the game is shifting more into a finesse, speed, and penalty laden game of the modern era. Physicality is still a large part of the game, but it is less so than speed and skill. We are definitely not at the point of the wide open European game yet, but the gap has closed significantly in recent years.
If you have watched the Los Angeles Kings over the last several years you know what they have been about. They are a big, tough, physical team. They are the antithesis to a Datsyuk, a Johnny Gaudreau. However, is that has also proven to be a rather unsustainable offensive model for the Kings. They have been a stunted offensive team that more often than not will default to size and physicality over pure skill and hockey sense. That is just how they are made up. That is why we never saw players like Brandon Kozun get a chance. Size aside, that is why we saw players like Thomas Hickey, Linden Vey, Matt Moulson, and Andrei Loktionov move on. There were not Kings style players. It was obvious. Loktionov and Moulson were perimeter players. Hickey and Vey were light on the physical side of things. Three of these four have developed into fine NHL players in their own right.
The Kings, for better or for worse, like players who are "Hard to play against."
Question is, if they are players labeled as big, tough, and hard to play against, how come they are not hard to play against? Jordan Nolan, Kyle Clifford and Andy Andreoff bring enough sandpaper to a lineup that they could whittle a redwood tree down into a toothpick. However, they have not proven to be hard to play against. A quick look at the three worst possession contributors on the Kings will generally turn up one or two of those three players in different categories.
This is not to say that those three are bad hockey players at all. They simply are remnants of some outdated thinking and cheesy hockey cliches.
"Grit and toughness."
"Hard to play against."
"You can't teach size." (*note Andreoff is listed at 6'0", not huge by any means but not small)
Jordan Weal has played two outstanding seasons with the Los Angeles Kings organization. He is not the only undersized yet productive player trying to make the big show either. Brian O'Neill, a 27-year old Yale grade and the AHL MVP this season, stands at a towering 5'9" and 175 pounds. With two solid years in the AHL under his belt, very few players know of him despite being on the Monarchs top line and the league MVP. While no one seems to doubt the ability of either player, the question of whether or not they can stand up to the physicality of the NHL game often comes up.
Is this fair? Is this reasonable? Good players come in all shapes and sizes. If they are good at hockey then they should be given a shot. No offense to the big, gritty, fourth liner who plays six-eight minutes a night of "tough" hockey, but why is that they get the nod where others must flounder due to a lack of stature?
There has been an influx in the last few years of small players. This is fitting for the way the game is changing. The Kings covet a pretty solid candidate for an NHL job next season if they are going off of the body of work and not the body. If you want to toss O'Neill in that conversation with Weal then by all means, do so. Ask yourself who would you rather see on a Kings fourth line?
Will Dean Lombardi and crew take the plunge and actually dress an undersized player though? That will definitely be one of the major storylines going into next season. The Kings' bottom-six is packed like a mail truck on Mother's Day already, so he will have to take the job from someone else. With healthy extensions coming to both Clifford and Nolan this season, it looks just that much tougher moving forward to earn a spot.
If Weal becomes just another Brandon Kozun then you have to ask yourself, why even draft them in the first place?
The NHL is changing in a way, and it may be time for the Kings to re-evaluate how they value size versus skill, and toughness versus speed, when it comes to the roster. Who's to say any of these players will turn into something special? However, they should at least be afforded the same chance at the NHL level to prove it right or wrong.
++++I AM CURRENTLY LOOKING FOR ADVERTISERS! If you, or anyone you know would be interested in placing an ad on the blog here at HockeyBuzz then send me a PM!+++++