Kings Embrace a Grim Reality

The new office is 51 steps and a curtain removed from the old one, down the hall from the visitors’ locker room in Staples Center.

The Kings have a new guardian, and he is certainly no angel.

When Steve McKenna was lost to Minnesota in the NHL expansion draft in June, Stu Grimson’s name immediately leaped to the mind of Dave Taylor, the Kings’ senior vice president and general manager.

He was a free agent and was still in the neighborhood after being set adrift by the Mighty Ducks. The Kings needed to replace McKenna’s force, to have what Coach Andy Murray calls a “nuclear deterrent,” so they hired Grimson, a 6-foot-5, 226-pound left wing, to deter Colorado’s Scott Parker and Phoenix’s Louie DeBrusk, among others.

“If you don’t have him, there’s nothing to stop them,” said Rob Blake, the Kings’ captain. “You don’t want Ziggy [Palffy] or Luc [Robitaille] to have to take shots from those guys.”

A year ago, Palffy was taking shots from Grimson in an exhibition that ended up with the ice looking like a glove sale.

Now Palffy is under Grimson’s wing.

The Kings had been on Grimson’s mind even while he was still cashing paychecks signed by Duck management, which decided that his lack of speed was a liability that outweighed his willingness to drop his gloves.

“I didn’t realize until early in July that the Ducks weren’t going to offer me a contract,” Grimson said. “But even before that, I said in close circles that this is the organization for me.”

Part of it is geography, since he remains a resident of Irvine.

Part is something else.

“It’s a different atmosphere, I can tell you that, but I’m not going to tell you which is better,” he said. “This program shows that they support you as a player and want to do what is required to win.”

His job is simple. And it isn’t.

“It’s the toughest job in hockey,” Murray said. “You have to be prepared to drop your gloves any night and fight, to protect your teammates.

“I have to give him a lot of credit. Some people come into the league doing that and then they lose their taste for it.”

Saturday in Denver, Grimson was up at 7 a.m. for breakfast and at the arena by 9, an hour ahead of most of his teammates for the morning skate. Twice later that night, he fought Parker, who has clashed with three different Kings in three years of exhibitions, still trying to make a place for himself in the NHL.

It wasn’t personal. It was business.

“I don’t begrudge him that,” Grimson says. “I had to climb the totem pole when I was younger too.”

The taste remains for Grimson, even after 12 NHL seasons, even if sometimes that taste is sour because dealing with another’s fists nightly challenges anybody’s courage.

“I’m afraid every time I go up and face somebody,” he said quietly. “It’s not fear to the point that I’m intimidated.”

It’s fear of not doing his job.

He knows why he’s being paid $500,000 on a one-year contract, and it isn’t for offense. Grimson had a goal and two assists in 50 games last season for the Ducks, but he also had 116 penalty minutes, most of them logged in deterring threats to Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne.

He has only 13 goals and 19 assists in 12 seasons, but 1,802 penalty minutes

“A player like me, who does what I’ve done in this league for [12] years, isn’t going to change his game,” Grimson said. “Andy has made it clear that he wants me to take some responsibility in leadership.”

It’s an aspect seemingly overlooked on Grimson’s resume of dropped gloves and penalty minutes.

“Look, everybody just looks at Stu as a fighter,” Blake said. “He couldn’t have lasted as long in this league as he has if he didn’t have a positive effect in the locker room. People don’t know about that.”

Murray is of two minds, on the one hand decrying violence in the sport, on the other seeking force to blunt that of the opposition.

Blake contends Grimson’s job is essential. “I don’t like to fight and he can win them,” Blake said. “And the people who don’t believe fighting is sometimes part of the game are people who haven’t played it.”

Blake also said that rather than inciting additional violence, “it settles a game down. When play has been ‘chippy,’ [a fight] tends to calm things.”

Grimson just shrugs and does what he has to do to make a living. The primary effect is that it feeds his family.

“I’m at a stage in my career where I do what I do with pride,” he said.

“Every youngster envisions himself as a star defenseman, a star goalie, a star forward, but as you get older in the game you understand that there are niches and slots that everyone fits in. People who fit in as role players are no less valuable.”

And they are in demand, their emotional ties changing with the sweater. Once, Grimson protected the Ducks’ Kariya and Selanne.

Now he protects those he used to antagonize, and will antagonize those he used to protect. The ultimate mercenary.

“I’m a professional and have changed colors,” he says. “I put on a Kings’ shirt, that’s who I am, where my allegiance lies.

“Ziggy, Bryan Smolinski and Nelson Emerson, they’re my brothers now.”

They’re the Kings to whom he is paid to play big brother.

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Grim Reaper

Tough guy Stu Grimson signed a one-year contract with the Kings. His career numbers:

* Seasons in NHL: 12

* Goals: 13

* Assists: 19

* Penalty minutes: 1,802

*

KINGS

Fiset has been unscored upon but largely untested in exhibitions.

D8

DUCKS

A 2-0 loss to Phoenix leaves Anaheim with one goal and no victories. D8