LA Kings 2003 Draft: Who? Why? Where is He Now?

The 2003 Draft wasn’t as bad as the 2002 Draft. I promise:

1. Dustin Brown (R1)
2. Brian Boyle (R1)
3. Jeff Tambellini (R1)
4. Konstantin Pushkarev (R2)
5. Ryan Munce (R3)
6. Brady Murray (R5)
7. Esa Pirnes (R6)
8. Matt Zaba (R8)
9. Mike Sullivan (R8)
10. Martin Guerin (R9)

I wonder if Dustin Brown will ever lose the baby fat in his face. I’m happy to know that our first pick of the draft is playing for the Kings and doing well, but he should be better on the scoreboard. He has shown improvement over every season so I’m hopeful that he’ll be putting up Cammalleri numbers within the next two seasons. He’s two years younger than Cammalleri, so he’s right on track. He played superbly while in high school, on the US squad, and with Manchester so it seems like any day he’ll turn it up in the NHL. Watch out for D. Brown, his coming out party is just around the corner.

The Kings just signed Brian Boyle to a two-year entry level contract. He played four years at Boston College and played two games this year with Manchester. At 6’7” and 220 lbs, the guy is huge. It’ll be interesting to see if he starts in LA or in Manchester. After all the past failed first round picks, it would be nice to see Boyle turn into a great player.

Along with Grebeshkov (see below for yesterday’s post), Jeff Tambellini was traded to the Islanders in exchange for Mark Parrish and Brent Sopel at the 2006 trade deadline. Considering the position the Kings were in at the time of the trade deadline, neither Parrish nor Sopel were going to be the deciding factors that pushed the Kings into the playoffs. They were in a horrible downward spiral and they shouldn’t have traded away two guys that had a lot of potential for two veterans that didn’t bring very much to the team for the rest of the season. Parrish left for Minnesota and while Sopel had surgery, which brought him back to being a pretty good defenseman, we ended up trading him this past season. Tambellini looks like he could become a great player and Islanders fans should keep an eye out for him.

At the 2007 trade deadline, Konstantin Pushkarev was sent to Dallas along with Matty Norstrom and several draft picks in exchange for “Future Hall of Famer”, Jaroslav Modry (see Kingscast.net for the joke), and a whole slew of draft picks. It’s quite confusing but if we use the draft picks to good use then it’ll be worth it. Plus, I could have sworn that I read somewhere that earlier this year DL was this close to shipping Pushkarev back to Russia but Hextall cleared the bad blood. So maybe it wasn't so bad that we got Pushkarev out of the organization.

I don’t think we’ll ever see Ryan Munce in a Kings jersey.

Did the Kings pick Brady Murray because his dad was the coach of the Kings? It’s probably unfair for me to pose the question but I had to put it out there. Regardless, the Kings actually just signed Murray at the beginning of May.

After a not so good stint in North America, Esa Pirnes decided to go back to Europe.

Matt Zaba has only played four years with Colorado College.

There are way too many hockey players named Mike Sullivan. I’m going to pick the Mike Sullivan that is listed fifth: This Mike Sullivan was born in San Francisco, CA, is a defenseman, and played four seasons, from 1970-1976, with the Fresno (“ewww”) Falcons. So, obviously, not our guy.

Maybe we’ll see Marty Guerin in a Monarchs jersey soon.

Overall, I’d say this draft wasn’t too bad. A lot of the players have a lot of potential and they’re at the age where they’re just finishing college and may want to try their hand at pro hockey. We picked far less Euro players in this Draft than in past ones, and considering our record with Euro players, especially those damn Russians, it might not have been a bad move, whether or not it was actually planned. I’m looking forward to seeing whether or not the North American players sign with the Kings and if they do, how they’ll transition to playing with the Royals, Monarchs, and/or Kings.