Willie Mitchell discusses future, day with the Cup

In case you missed Willie Mitchell’s day with the Stanley Cup in 2012, you missed quite the day. The Kings defenseman hosted the Cup in a private row boat near his hometown of Port McNeill, British Columbia and ascended to the top of Mount Benedict, where he drank champagne out of the Cup with his wife, Megan. The first day with the Cup in his career also included a ceremony with the Namgis First Nation and a family party.

For his to-be-planned day with the Cup this summer, he’s thinking of scaling back the activities and making sure his 88-year-old grandfather is involved.

“I think one of the coolest things with the Stanley Cup is being able to talk to the Cup keepers about the history of it, all the different players, the unique things about it, and basically let my grandfather have that opportunity to ask all those questions,” he said. “So I think something along those lines where it’s a little bit more low key, so we’ll see.”

The team he’ll be under contract to by the time his day with the Cup comes around is also to be determined.

Mitchell has the opportunity to become an unrestricted free agent when the two-year extension he signed in February, 2012 expires on July 1.

Acknowledging that “informal” contract negotiations with the team took place during the season, the 37-year-old understands that the talks are likely to get more concrete in the coming two weeks.

“I’m sure it’ll happen in the next little bit. We’re all kind of doing the same things, right? Doing exit medicals and meetings and stuff like that, and a little bit of partying mixed in – just a little bit. See how my swing is this afternoon, too,” he said, referencing the team’s Cup celebration at Dodger Stadium this afternoon.

“Really, that stuff, if it’s going to get done, it gets done in a short period of time, so there’s lots of time.”

After missing the entirety of the 2012-13 season due to a pair of knee surgeries, Mitchell totaled one goal and 12 points in 76 regular season games before scoring a goal as part of a four-point, 18-game playoff run. The stalwart veteran defender led the team in average penalty killing minutes per game in both the regular season and the playoffs and saw his 20:20 regular season time on ice average jump two full minutes in the playoffs to 22:20. Jonathan Quick will claim the Jennings Trophy on behalf of the Kings, who allowed the fewest goals in the NHL during the regular season.

That he continued to serve as a valuable asset both on and off the ice as the team’s elder statesman, and considering Los Angeles’ options on the left side include Jake Muzzin, Robyn Regehr, Alec Martinez and Brayden McNabb, there’s certainly a place for him to continue to earn important minutes despite the other names capable of sliding up the depth chart.

One complication surrounding his negotiations revolves around the team’s financial flexibility. The league’s salary cap is expected to rise to the 69.5-to-71.1 million dollar ballpark given the 3.7 billion dollars of league-wide projected revenue, which, according to CapGeek.com, would afford the Kings roughly 11 and a half million to 13 million dollars of projected cap space this summer.

Righthanded defenseman Matt Greene is also an unrestricted free agent, as are top playoff goal scorer Marian Gaborik, forward Colin Fraser and defensemen Jeff Schultz and Andrew Campbell. Dwight King, Linden Vey, Andy Andreoff and McNabb are restricted free agents with an opportunity to earn roles on the 2014-15 team.

“I mean, there’s lots of moving parts. I get it,” Mitchell said. “There’s Willie Mitchell, the player. There’s the salary cap, and then there’s as a GM you structure your team so hopefully you can have success over a long period of time. So I get it. If you’re asking me if I want to play hockey, hell yeah, and to be honest, I think probably this playoffs is the best hockey I’ve played. 2012 – I think even this one around I felt even better, which for me was a big personal accomplishment after missing last year with a couple knee surgeries. As much as you don’t like going through it, I think the breaks and missing hockey for a year makes you appreciate it that much more so you want to keep on playing, and then when you have success and have such a good year with a great bunch of guys, you just want to keep on playing, so we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. You always want to be somewhere where you’re wanted. We had a little bit of informal stuff during the course of the season with Dean there, and I’m sure we’ll chat here in the next little bit, and we’ll see what they want to do.”

He has every intention of continuing his hockey career, though there’s no timetable over how many years he ideally envisions himself playing.

“I don’t know. When you’re doing stuff like this, you can play a long, long time. I’ll play ‘til I’m 50,” he said. “There’s different things that go into that, Rosey. Health is obviously number one. I just finished my exit physical, and there’s not a thing on me, so I feel great. So that’s huge. I played 95 games or whatever I played…that’s a lot of hockey. I felt good, and luckily other than a hamstring pull against San Jose late, I had a pretty healthy year. So I think when you’re older and you’ve got your health, then you want to continue playing. Everyone has a different situation, but for me, I don’t want to play when I’m laying it up, in and out of the lineup. I want to only play when I’m making a difference out there with my teammates. Played lots down the stretch and lots in the playoffs, like I said, and felt I was on top of my stuff, so for me, that motivates me to continue playing because I just like that element of feeling like you’re making a difference. If I don’t have that anymore, where I’m not out there when the game’s on the line, or when we need a big penalty kill or something like that, then probably that’s when I’ll decide to reinvent myself and get onto the next thing.”

Willie Mitchell, on the feeling of winning in 2014 compared to 2012:
It’s different. I don’t think it’s boring. It’s exciting and it feels great, but it’s just a different great. Different journeys, that’s all. Both unique in their own way. This one probably was much more rewarding in the sense of how we accomplished it. The first time, for the majority of our group, it was the first time accomplishing it, so it’s that initial feeling of accomplishing something that you dreamed of doing, and then this time it’s more of a general awareness of what was going on, and how we were going about it, and just sometimes maybe you get to enjoy it a little bit more instead of kind of the surrealness of the first time.

Mitchell, on the team’s evolution in his time in Los Angeles:
I had a summer of free agency, and I was taking my time with it because I wanted the right fit for me. So I was kind of on the outside looking in, and just seeing a good young team that was starting to get better. They hadn’t had a ton of success yet but made the playoffs and you could kind of see that things were starting to change and turn, and now, yeah, it’s definitely a unique situation where you’ve got a team that’s been to the Western Conference Final three years ago and two Stanley Cups. Yeah, we expect a lot of each other and expect a lot of our group, and we know we’re capable of it, too, so that’s why we expect it out of each other. It’s kind of a fun little spot right now. Hopefully keep it going and enjoy it right now.

Mitchell, on whether he has a mountain chosen for his next day with the Stanley Cup:
You know what? It might just sit in the back of the car and we’ll drive around for the day. I’m serious. After last time, it was tough to top that one. We had a really cool and special day. It was crazy busy. I haven’t even thought about it, to be honest with you. You always think about all the things you want to do with it, and you can only jam so much into your day with it. I don’t know. I always thought I never wanted to do it because I thought everyone does it and it’s just quite boring, but I’d like to grab my buds and my mates from back home whom I played road hockey with, and get a road hockey game going and play for the Cup. I know a lot of guys who have done that, but I kind of said, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do that,’ and then I was thinking about it, and after last time I was like, ‘God, that would’ve been pretty cool to do that.’ I might just do that. I’m fortunate enough that my grandfather, who back in the Original Six days had a tryout with the Rangers and was assigned to Rochester. He’s still alive, and he’s 88, and he’s still with it and he gets it and he understands it, and so I’d like to somehow get where last day it was so busy that it was picture, keep on moving. There was no down time where we’d just sit around.

Mitchell, on having his name on the Stanley Cup twice:
I wonder what that stat is for guys who have won it two times. The Cup keeper – they probably know it…Well, we’ve got probably about 18 or 19 or whatever it is here, for sure. Justin and Colin, three times. How incredible is that? So yeah, I’m just honored. Just really honored, really cool. I don’t know – it’s tough right now. You get little moments – little things in life always kind of set off a bunch of empotions or flashbacks for you. A certain song, a certain thing or whatever. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of those moving forward as far as what we’ve accomplished here in the last few years.