Stoll still a King--but not on ice--as camp opens
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Center Jarret Stoll, bothered by arthritis in his right wrist, wanted to join his teammates for the first on-ice sessions of the Kings’ training camp at El Segundo but was held off the ice as a precaution.
Stoll said today that shots and medication have eased the discomfort he had felt from the arthritis in his knees and elbows, leaving only some soreness in his wrist. However, he said he had been skating in recent weeks and denied reports that the arthritis--which he said cropped up for the first time ever in August--might jeopardize his ability to start the season.
‘By no means do I expect to miss the start of the season. That hasn’t even entered my mind,’ he said. ‘It’s gotten better every day and I think I’ll probably be playing next week.’
Stoll also said it was ‘a good thing’ that other rumors--that he would be traded in a three-team deal that would have involved San Jose and Ottawa--didn’t come true. He did get concerned when he was flooded with text messages and calls last week and spoke to General Manager Dean Lombardi for assurance.
‘I guess it was just a bad report from a reporter or two,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to be here for sure.’
Defenseman Rob Scuderi, signed as a free agent in July after he won the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins, had a tough choice to make last week.
Go to the White House with his old teammates to meet President Barack Obama, or take his 2-year-old daughter to Disneyland for her birthday.
His daughter, Kate, won out.
‘Disneyland did take precedence over the president for probably the first time in history,’ Scuderi said. ‘I talked to some of the guys who said it was a good time and they had a nice visit. I would have loved to have gone but it was an awful lot of flying for one day and I wasn’t going to miss my daughter’s birthday.’
Scuderi was paired with Jack Johnson in the first group, a duo that seems ideal because Scuderi is a basic, conservative sort of defenseman and Johnson has the skills to take chances offensively.
‘Jack’s certainly got a lot of talent. It doesn’t take a long time around him to be able to see some of the skills that he has,’ Scuderi said. ‘So hopefully, we were just talking a lot today, getting a feeling for what he likes to say in certain situations, where I’ll be, just get some communication going before the season starts because it’s something that you want to have in place before your first game instead of trying to figure it out 10 games in.’
Some other lines: Anze Kopitar centering for Ryan Smyth and Justin Williams, Peter Harrold up front with tough guys Kevin Westgarth and Richard Clune, and Oscar Moller centering for Teddy Purcell and Dustin Brown.
Key defense pairs: Scuderi and Johnson, Thomas Hickey and Colten Teubert, Davis Drewiske with Matt Greene, and Andrew Campbell with Viatcheslav Voynov.
More later in the Fabulous Forum and at www.latimes.com/sports
-- Helene Elliott