Colten Teubert wasn’t on the ice for today’s development camp, and when I went to shake his hand, I found out why. Teubert has a soft cast on his right hand/wrist, the product of a broken bone he suffered late in the season while playing for the Ontario Reign. Teubert hasn’t had the easiest of times since being drafted by the Kings No. 13 overall in 2008. His offensive numbers improved considerably during his last two years of junior hockey, but after each, he was assigned to the ECHL instead of the AHL. Now, with even more defenseman in the system, Teubert’s challenge doesn’t get any easier. Here’s what Teubert had to say today…
—–
Question: What happened to the hand?
TEUBERT: “I got hurt in Ontario. They misdiagnosed it, and I had to get the surgery done.”
Question: Are you off the ice totally? What kind of work can you do?
TEUBERT: “I haven’t been on the ice yet. I’ve been working out on my lower body, and the left side of my body, so I’m staying fit and in shape and hopefully everything heals well and I’m back to 100 percent soon.”
Question: A little frustrating, I’d imagine?
TEUBERT: “Yeah, it’s frustrating. I haven’t been through this type of adversity in my career yet, but I think it’s going to be a challenge for me and really test my mind and my physical training, to see how well I can stay conditioned and keep my head in the game.”
Question: Are you expecting to be ready for training camp?
TEUBERT: “I’m expecting to. I’m not 100-percent sure what’s going to happen. I just saw the doctor today, and I’m going to have this (cast) on for a bit longer. As long as I do the right things, I think it will give me an opportunity to be healthy at training camp.”
Question: What exactly is the injury?
TEUBERT: “I broke my scaphiod. It was a third-degree fracture, so I just got a screw and got that replaced. That’s been about four weeks now.”
Question: Do you know how you hurt it?
TEUBERT: “I hurt my hand in Ontario, and I wasn’t sure that I had hurt it. I got x-rays, and the x-rays came back negative but I still had pain. So I played the rest of the season. I didn”t really realize that it was broken until about seven weeks later, after I had already been training. It was just one of those bad-luck things. I just thought, you know, `Be tough,’ and it just kind of bit me in the back.”
Question: How do you feel like you’ve developed over the last year?
TEUBERT: “I feel good. Physically, I’m getting a lot stronger, and with Tim’s workouts we’re really stressing the lunges. I think my lower body is getting a lot stronger too, because I have this hand injury right now. I’m just hoping that I can come into camp in tip-top shape and just get an opportunity to show what I can do, and move into the pro ranks.”
Question: When there are so many defensive prospects in the system, is that motivating to you, or challenging, or both?
TEUBERT: “I think it’s both. I think it’s motivating and challenging. You look at the quality players they have in the defense corps, with us just drafting a first-round D-man too, and we’re definitely looking to build defense first. With the success that Manchester had last year, it just shows that drafting D–men and having good, solid D really helps both teams, especially with the Kings.”
Question: When you see them draft a defenseman, does it concern you about where you stand with the team?
TEUBERT: “I mean, that’s their decision to make. I’m going to do whatever it takes to stay up on top. I know we’re all a team in this organization here, but individually, I want to be the best and I want to play in the NHL one day, so I’m going to do whatever it takes to do that. With that, with them drafting other players, it just sets a real challenging environment and it makes it really competitive to play on this team in the future.”
Very impressive answers. Sounds like he’s grown up a lot.
[Reply]
Gotta hand it to you Rich, takes a bit of balls to ask some of those questions. Great work as always!
[Reply]
Darrell Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
@Jim, Well, Teubert’s hand WAS in a cast, after all..
[Reply]
@TEUBERT, It not only sets up a challenging environment, it also sets up the possibilities of a nice trade package.
[Reply]
DougS Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
@Skebo,
With a surplus of D prospects, the Kings certainly have some trade bait. Classic rule of trade: What you have in abundance, swap it for what you have in dearth.
Some folks questioned why DL would take yet another D with the #19 overall pick, and the wisdom of going for the best player available. I think it will work out fine in the end, because with 29 other teams in the league, you should be able to find a trading partner who needs what you have, and who can give you something useful in exchange.
[Reply]
NOW IMPRESSED Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
@DougS, Personally, I think going for the best player available is going for what you need. Putting your team in a situation where it must make a trade is putting your fate in another team’s general manager. The only way I would have picked Forbert was if I thought he is head and shoulders above any available forward.
[Reply]
DougS Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
@NOW IMPRESSED,
If there was perfectly even distribution of talent between all positions at all times in the draft, you would have a good point.
But let’s say you’d like to get a center in the 1st round, but all the really good centers — the ones projected to go in the 1st round — are gone, and the only ones left are projected to go in the 2nd round. You’re confident that the next best center on your list will still be available when your 2nd round pick comes up. Do you (in all probability) spend a 1st round pick drafting a player who would still be available to you in the 2nd round? Or do you take the best player left on the board, knowing that you could always flip him later for an asset that you need more badly, or that he might actually turn out to be better than anyone else you have at that position?
The latter strikes me as a waste of a pick.
In other words, let’s say you need a winger, but you have plenty of defensemen. But the best wingers have already been taken, and there’s a pretty good defensemen left on the board. Do you draft to position and take a kid that has a 30% chance of being productive in the NHL, or take a kid who has a 60% chance of making it even though you’re already stocked at that position?
A 60% of getting something (i.e., best player available) strikes me as a better proposition than a 70% chance of getting nothing (i.e., drafting a lesser player who fills a positional need).
DougS Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Okay, I screwed myself there. It should be, “The former strikes me as a waste of a pick.”
luc20rules Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
@NOW IMPRESSED, That is likely the case, DL stated that he sees Forbort developing into a 1-2 D-Man. I don’t think any of the forwards there at #15 are projected as top 3 guys.
I hope he can at least make to Manchester this year. From the sound of this interview it sounds like he’s working on what he needs to and you could always use a guy with his skill set on the big club. My hope is two years in Manchester, he owns everyone trying to come into his D-zone, AHL players skate away from him, then he comes to the Kings and we win our 2nd cup of the back to back, he becomes a fan favorite….
was that a run on?
[Reply]
Hmmm.
As a radiologist, can’t say that I understand Teubert’s ‘third-degree fracture’ of the scaphoid, but I certainly can understand the tendency to miss a scaphoid fracture on initial plain films. Sounds like there was some degree of ligamentous damage to the wrist as well… Hope it wasn’t a DISI fracture/subluxation. There are other worries about the scaphoid that are too problematic to get into.
We shall see, like with so many things…
[Reply]
Undercover Brother Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
@BakoCAkingsCondorsGuy, hmmmm, as a layman, I have no idea what you just said, but it sounded pretty solid. Go Kings!
[Reply]
Moondoggie Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
@Undercover Brother, Amen!
[Reply]
luc20rules Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
@BakoCAkingsCondorsGuy, Good to hear from you, last I hear you were on off the site for the summer. Good to get the expert evaluation. I had no idea what a scaphoid was.
[Reply]
BakoCAkingsCondorsGuy Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
@luc20rules,
The summer may cook, but HOCKEY RULES!
Actually, I went to the first day of the Draft in L.A., over an hour late due to So. Cal. traffic, and had a blast anyway.
The scaphoid bone lies between one the long bone of the forearm (the radius) and the thumb. It’s easily fractured with a fall onto the outstretched palm, fractures hard to see on initial X-rays. The medical acronyms are just shorthand for different injuries. I sincerely hope there are no 4-letter acronyms in Teubert’s future.
[Reply]
If there’s one thing going for Teubert it’s his grit. Most of our team and it’s prospects are on the small side.
If Colten can go to Manchester and be one of the top shutdown guys and make life miserable for the opponents, we will see Teub soon.
[Reply]
Was at development camp this morning So fun..
to be with my peeps!
talked to a guy who has season tickets to Reign and
also closely follows Manchester.. he is really up on
our young ones.. he said Teubert was just a monster for the month he spent in Ontario.. actually got warned by the refs and had a talking to by the coach for showing
a little too much uncontolled energy. He got into one
fight and pounded the other guy to a pulp. I sure hope he stays with the orginiztion and we see him in a King’s uniform… he sounds like an exciting prospect to me!
GO KINGS GO !!!
[Reply]
two lines of reasoning I think are misguided:
(1) we should have drafted a winger because we need a winger this year.
(2) drafting a defenseman means that our other defensive prospects are on the trading block.
The first one, I think, people have covered. Players we draft now, especially if we’re not picking in the top two picks of the draft, are for three-five years down the line. Not for this year.
As for Forbort’s arrival boding poorly for Hickey or Teubert, or Muzzin or Voynov or DesLauriers…
It’s entirely possible that some blue-chip prospects will be dealt soon, and certainly many will move on as the years pass, but it’s also a fact that — especially in cap-land — you have to have a steady procession of “ripening” prospects in all positions, year after year. You get a couple of new ones every season, and a couple more get their big contracts and a couple of guys leave as UFA, repeat. Let’s make a chart of the defensemen and when we might reasonably expect them to be NHL ready.
2007 — Johnson (05)
2008 — Doughty (08)
2009 — Drewiske (UFA)
2010 — Muzzin (07) Martinez (07) Hickey (07)(Fransson?)
2011 — Voynov (08) Teubert (08)
2012 — DesLauriers (09) Campbell (09)
2013 — Forbort (10), Gravel (10)
We can quibble about who will be ready-ready in which year or if some of them will EVER be ready. The point is, with the exception of the freak of nature that is Drew Doughty, defensemen take a few years to develop, basically three years to get your feet wet and four or five to get it together. That’s the way it is. Forbort doesn’t replace Teubert, except in so far as Teubert will be due his first non-ELC contract when Forbort is still in the middle of his ELC, and eventually the younger kids have the chance to be a cheaper alternative to their older brothers.
[Reply]
MIK3Ysfv Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
@Quisp, You are the man. Thank you Quisp. You have patience.
[Reply]
Moondoggie Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
@Quisp, Great call again Quisp…..thx!
[Reply]
luc20rules Reply:
July 1st, 2010 at 6:41 pm
@Quisp, Great post. As to any additional comments I may try to add. Master, I am yet not able to snatch the stone from your hand.
[Reply]
@Quisp (1) we should have drafted a winger because we need a winger this year.
Not sure if I get this, so what you’re saying is that becuase we’re in need of a winger this year, that’s who we should have taken?? Assuming that the kid we draft is going to come in and score 20 something goals in his first year?? Stamkos, Tavares, those guys leave in the first five picks, after that you take “assests” just like Lombardi always talks about. Three years from now, their may still be a need for a top 3-6 forward or you may have addressed that need through free agency, but at least you have peices that you can move without sacraficing Doughty, Johnson, Kopitar, Brown, Simmonds etc.
[Reply]
number 6 Reply:
July 2nd, 2010 at 10:53 am
@BayAreaKingsFan,
No, he’s saying that that is what OTHER people are saying, and trying to explain to them that that Isn’t the way it works…… because even though we need a winger now, said winger won’t be nhl ready for at least one if not two years down the road.
[Reply]