The NHL Rookie Draft is the official season reset button for every hockey team that didn't win the Stanley Cup this year. The playoffs are over, and all the award hardware has been given out. No matter what success your team experienced, you didn't come home with the big prize, and it's now time to wipe the slate clean and hope for better things for the coming season. Because you want that big prize in your future. And your organization needs a transfusion of new blood to help that process along. It may not be next year, but the hope is that if you draft well, you'll have fresh legs coming up as the old ones move out, and you stay in contention for the the Holy Grail year after year (aka the dreaded Detroit Redwings). At least that's the theory. Sometimes you suck so bad, you just have to clean house and start over (hello, New York Islanders).
The Kings have been cleaning house for a couple of years now, and it's making progress, but you can never look too far ahead, so we Kings fans always get excited about the draft. Even when the team is not "officially" sponsoring a draft party as they have the past few years. WARNING: I am about to get on my soapbox and rant for a minute. If you don't like my bitching, skip the next paragraph.
As a season ticket holder, I think it's a cheeseball excuse to say "We shouldn't be focusing too much on the draft, which is only one piece of the development picture." Not doing an "official" event is a way to save money. I get it AEG. Michael Jackson died and you owe about $81 million in concert ticket refunds. You've got bigger problems than your little hockey team. Why should you spend your money feeding hot dogs and cokes to the people that buy tickets to see your team and keep you in business? Let's just have an "unofficial" watch party at the ESPN Zone and let these people pay for their own food and beverages. Then we can make nice to them and see if we can still sell them more season tickets, but it won't cost anything. Genius marketing.
OK, rant over. I am a loyal fan, and care more about my Kings than I do the machinations of our marketing people. Plus, I wanted to see what young talent we were going to grab. That Doughty kid we got last year worked out pretty good...maybe we can find another one.
One fun add-on to the party this year was the Kings first "Tweet-Up." For you non-computer folks, this is where a bunch of hockey fans that talk online all day on Twitter actually meet up in person.
It was really fun to meet up with some of the folks I share my hockey obsession with on a daily basis. They're all very cool people. We even took an official group photo.
After the niceties were over, it was time to get down to business. Picks one through four pretty much went in order, and as predicted the Kings selected Brayden Schenn 5th in the first round.
A little cool history here...Brayden's big brother Luke Schenn was drafted number 5 last year. And Luke Schenn is good friends with none other than Kings 2008-09 superstar rookie...Drew Doughty! Lots of reasons to like this kid already. Here's a link to a nice write-up by my Twitter buddy Jon Moncrief on young Mr. Schenn and the draft party itself, including some Tweet-Up coverage.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2690-Los-Angeles-Kings-Examiner~y2009m6d27-Kings-handle-2009-draft-with-skillful-efficiency
And it wouldn't be a Kings event unless I ran into Bailey. He loves to mess with me when I'm trying to take his picture. His shtick this time was moving just when I hit the button on my camera phone so it wouldn't stay in focus. I finally got it right the fourth time...
Our next hockey stop is Free Agency starting July 1st....and that's a whole other Oprah show.
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