THE Kiss“Practicing the ice rink at El Segundo is empty, except for two men who turn near the blue line, ready to fight. One, roughly the size and shape of a small automatic distributor, is in street clothes while the other towers above him in skates and a white and black hockey sweater.
If they come to blows, it will be a gap, especially since the larger guy has a helmet and wears a stick. But teaching players to defend themselves in situations like this is somehow the point.
The highly muscular man in street clothes is Jeremy ClarkA black Brazilian jiu-jitsu belt that all the players call the combat coach. And the first rule of the combat coach is not to talk about the combat coach. At least not in these terms.
“It's our trust coach”, Glen MurrayThe director of players' development for kings linked to the playoffs, said about the man who teaches the team to fight.
“We prefer to call him our tenacity coach,” said a team spokesperson.
As for what Clark prefers to be called is not known because the second coach of the Combat rule is that no one is authorized to speak to the combat coach. But what you call it, Clark, the owner of a crossfit gymnasium and combat training in Minnesota, is a key element in a program of development of players who has left no unexplored idea if he has a chance to improve kings.
So, in addition to a fight … Uh, confidence coach, the team has four strength and packaging coaches, a sports dietitian, a psychologist, a skating coach, a video coordinator and a goalkeeper. There are specialists who work on shooting and others working on confrontations. Add everything and the kings have more people of players' development, about two dozen in all, than they have players. And that does not count the four coaches that the team puts behind the bench in each match.
Kings coach Jim Hiller talks to his players in a match against Florida's panthers in January.
(Marta Lavandier / Associated Press)
It is an expensive commitment, some other NHL teams have tried to match. But with the line separating the best teams of the thinnest and thinner thin, it is an investment that helped the kings of the franchise in a single season for the victories (48) and the points (105) this year while demanding the advantage of ice at home for the first round of the eliminatory series. They will open the playoffs on Monday in Crypto.com Arena Against Edmonton's OilersThe team that eliminated them in the first round Each of the last three seasons.
“This is a necessary expenditure,” said Murray. “In the end, the most important people in the organization are the players and we must prepare them best that we can with the tools we have. We will make sure you have the best of everything to be able to play. ”
The process of building this philosophy began under the former managing director Dean Lombardiwhich presented certain parts of sport science and other technologies while leading the team with two Stanley cuts.
“He has always talked about winning an additional 3%. Trying to improve the team,” said Bill RanfordThe director of goalkeepers for the Kings, a job that Ranford believes that half a dozen NHL teams have. “The teams are always looking for this advantage.”
Bill Ranford, director of Kings goalkeepers, talks about the Kings Hampton Slukynsky prospect during the development camp.
(Gary A. Vasquez / NHLI via Getty Images)
But the continuation of this edge has become a priority under Rob Blakewhich replaced Lombardi before the 2017-18 season. Among his first movements was the promotion of Murray.
“Rob is quite calculated. He is patient, methodical. But when there is clear evidence that we must make changes to add or grow, he never hesitated,” Matt PriceThe Director of Force and Kings performance sciences, said about Blake, who took the warmth of fans about his list decisions but has proven a visionary with many things that he has pushed ice.
Price has seen his triple under Blake department, adding a full -time dietitian, two additional coaches and a dietitian coach and force for the AHL of the team in Ontario.
“We have monitoring data of players who are collected every day which must be analyzed and processed and presented. There is a mountain of information that is collected every day,” said Price. “So it's just the evolution of NHL, the Kings are somehow early adopters. We have really been at the forefront of the spear on many of these things.”
Murray estimates that overall investment in force and nutrition alone “much over $ 1 million” per season, a good deal considering what this investment has bought.
“The kind of feeling is that the work we do for the 82 -game course gets three points,” said Price, who is in his 11th season with the Kings. “This could be that we manage the players the second night on a back and we had this game at the overtime and we got the point. It could be a decision that took with coaches how to manage the burden.”
Or this could be what the team's price and medical staff have done to obtain the future defender of the fame of fame DREW DOUGHTY Back from a broken ankle in just four months.
“During a long season, there is so much usable data that somewhere in there, we think that we have put a few points in bank,” said Price.
Kari OliverWho joined the team as a sports dietitian in the middle of the 2020-21 season, said that few NHL teams offer the type of nutritional support that Kings do. Oliver, who also manages the food supplements of players and laboratory work, has culinary staff of more than half a dozen, including two sous-chefs to the team's training establishment of the team, where players receive two custom meals individually and a recovery of recovery every day of the team.
“Nutrition is massive these days,” said Murray. “Some children have no idea that they are supposed to eat and how much more energy and what gives them more energy. I am surprised that not all the teams have it. We are lucky.”
To ensure that players do not move away from their diet, Oliver plans and oversees each meal that players receive from the team, including food served on the team's charter flights.
“I feel like I plan a wedding every time we do a road trip,” she said. “Even if we go to a team restaurant – we often do so in the playoffs – I will go to the restaurant and make sure everything is configured exactly how we want it. I work with each hotel in which we stay and I send them menus.”
She said that she was gaining an appreciation for the difference in the team's support program each time a new player arrives.
“They tell us their experience (elsewhere) where,” said Oliver, who took players during supermarket visits and gave them cooking demonstrations as part of their nutritional education. “When they arrive here, I sit down, I will sit with them and a little fast fire tries to find a profile of them from a nutritional point of view.”
One of the converts of this season is the goalkeeper Darcy KuemperWho played half a season with the Kings shortly after taking over from Blake, then was exchanged to the team last summer. The difference between and now, he said, has been dramatic and he attributes to Oliver, Price, Ranford and the rest of the sprawling support staff to help him in the best season of his career.
Kings Kevin Fiala striker famous with teammates after scoring a victory against Edmonton's Oilers on April 14. The two teams will once again meet in the first round of the playoffs, from Monday.
(Andy Devlin / NHLI via Getty Images)
“You see the different people they have in place, be it nutrition, strength. From an organizational point of view, they want to give us all the tools so that we have everything we need to (be) the best version of yourself,” said Kuemper, whose average goals of 2.02 was the second best among the regular guards this season. “So there is no excuses to go out and play.”
One of the reasons why the Kings is successful is the support staff, such as the ice team, knows their roles and they stay in their ways. But they also complement each other and quietly share the credit for the success of the team.
“We want to do our job, but we don't do much fanfare of what we are doing,” said Oliver. “We just want to make sure that we give them very good resources and that we stay behind the scenes.”
“We are here to maximize the potential. And, for the most part, players see this as an important help,” added Price. “They see it as something that can really increase their performance. They all know that better performance equal to greater contracts. Better performance means more victories. ”
Credit Blake for finding a way to draw these additional victories.
“The difference between doing nothing and doing something,” added Price “is a fairly important gap”.
