Armstrong Enjoys View From Top

Derek Armstrong has been on the late-night bus rides from Syracuse to Hartford, hitting his third city in four nights, a passenger and player all too familiar with the grind of minor league hockey.

These days, he travels on charter flights, stays in upper-echelon hotels and rubs elbow pads with some of the world’s elite as the top-line center for the Kings, but he isn’t taking anything for granted.

Although he is second in goal scoring for the Kings, with five, his latest triumph in an 11-year career heavily weighted with minor league minutes, Armstrong still instinctively peeks over his shoulder.

Armstrong, 30, has played 447 games in the minors or overseas, and 166 in the NHL, 66 of them last season in a break-through year with the Kings, tying for third in team scoring with 38 points.

“My whole career, I’ve never felt comfortable anywhere,” Armstrong said. “You can never grow complacent out there. There’s always someone there waiting in the wings. You can never feel that sense of security.”

Until last season, Armstrong’s career had been one step forward, two steps back.

In 1993-94, his first season, he played one game with the New York Islanders and 76 with Salt Lake City of the International Hockey League, a pattern that continued.

Nine games with the Ottawa Senators in 1997-98, 64 games in the minors. Six games with the New York Rangers from 1998 to 2000, 134 with Hartford of the American Hockey League. Forty-four games with SC Bern in Switzerland in 2001-02, no games in the NHL.

He got his chance with the Kings because they were devastated by injuries last season. He delivered then and has done it again in another injury-riddled season, the Kings being without centers Jason Allison (whiplash) and Jozef Stumpel (chest bruise).

“I don’t know where our team would be without Derek Armstrong,” Coach Andy Murray. “He’s a story, what he’s gone through. He makes everybody good around him.”

Armstrong was never incapable in the minors. He won an armful of awards, including AHL most valuable player and AHL scoring champion, but he never had much of a chance with any of the parent teams.

The prevailing wisdom was that he skated too slow, didn’t carry the puck into the zone with enough fire and was good enough for the AHL, but not the NHL.

“He’d get to the offensive line, from what I was told, get his feet apart and look to make plays,” Murray said. “The game’s faster at the NHL level. He could do that at the AHL level or he could maybe do that playing in Switzerland, but he couldn’t do it in the NHL. When he came to us, he had to learn to play more up-tempo and I think he’s done that.”

His teammates have noticed. Luc Robitaille, the highest-scoring left wing in NHL history, was not familiar with Armstrong when Robitaille rejoined the Kings this season.

“I really didn’t know who he was when I came here,” Robitaille said. “A bunch of guys told me he played real well last year. Then I started looking at his past and realized he’s one of those players in professional sports whose timing was never quite right. Every team he went to, he seemed to always be the leading scorer on their farm team, but then teams would call him up and put him on the fourth line. What’s a guy going to do?”

There was only one thing Armstrong could do. Work on his skating, keep on scoring, keep on waiting for a chance to tilt in his direction.

The Kings picked him up in July 2002 from the New York Rangers for a conditional draft pick that turned out to be a sixth-round selection in 2003.

He took advantage of the Kings’ dire situation last season -- a record 536 man-games lost to injury -- and is now centering the No. 1 line, Robitaille on his left side and Ziggy Palffy to his right.

Robitaille, for one, has come to appreciate Armstrong.

“I think he’s one of those players where people probably said his whole career, he’s not really fast,” Robitaille said. “They always questioned his speed. But no matter what, he always seems to be the first one on the puck.

“How does he do it? Nobody knows. He moves the puck fast. If he sees the guy open, boom, it’s on his stick. That’s what makes his game really dangerous.”

So, apparently, Armstrong has finally made it. And every once in a while, he allows himself a little satisfaction. He smiles at the consistency of an NHL paycheck, the thought of being a top-line center ... but only occasionally.

“Sometimes I’ll talk to all my buddies back home who’ve followed me my whole career,” he said. “What 30-year-old guy wouldn’t want to play with NHL guys? They’re elite hockey players.”