Futa talks combine

The NHL summer unofficially kicked off last weekend, when management types of all stripes met in Toronto for the draft combine. The combine features 100 draft-eligible prospects, who are put through workouts to determine their physical fitness, and also have interviews with teams to determine their mental “fitness.” For some details at what happened at this year’s combine, check out an NHL.com blog here. Given that the Kings hold the No. 19 overall pick in the first round, they don’t figure to be as high-profile as they’ve been in recent years, but the draft will always be a central part of GM Dean Lombardi’s plan. To that extent, it was a significant weekend for the Kings. I caught up with Mike Futa, the Kings’ co-director of amateur scouting (along with Mark Yannetti), who talked about his impressions of the combine…

Question: The draft combine isn’t something that gets a lot of media attention, at least relative to other events. Could you maybe talk about the things that you see there, and what you try to take away from the weekend?

FUTA: “I think it’s an important tool, but I think — and I’m sure Dean uses this terminology — there’s a big pot, and this is just a piece of the stuff that goes into the final decision. With these kids, it would be pretty frightening if this was the first time you were meeting them. You only get 10, 12 minutes with each kid. The fitness testing is kind of set up in a way that it’s almost like walking into the Royal Winter Fair. They’re roped off, and they kind of walk them through, station to station. That part of it, I think, is becoming more media-driven. There’s 18 cameras waiting for Taylor Hall to come in the ring and then there’s 18 cameras waiting for Tyler Seguin to come in the ring. Then those guys who are eligible to make those picks, everybody wants to get a shot of (Edmonton’s) Steve Tambellini and (Boston’s Peter) Chiarelli with their chins on their knuckles, watching the kids as though each bench press is the future of the organization (laughs).

“From our standpoint, it was kind of nice. We’ve got some hard work to do, and it was the first time since, certainly since I’ve been involved, that we haven’t been a first down from the steps (of the draft stage). So it’s something different for us. It’s something we’re certainly proud of. That said, we treating it the same. The one year, we had the Stamkos-Doughty-Bogosian thing. This year, we’ve kind of ironed out about seven or eight guys that we really feel are going to be available in the area that we’re picking, and we’re doing all the same things. We spend time with families and kids. We have extra time with them, away from the time allotted at the combine. So you try to get them in the right order. Certainly we have the feeling that we’re going to get an excellent player. The combine itself, the fitness portion in particular, I find to be… Not that the results are something to be frowned upon, but it really just becomes such a media thing that it’s almost like the scouts are an afterthought.”

Question: The phrase I’ve heard Dean use a few times is that you use the combine to reinforce things you already believe about these players…

FUTA: “That’s all you’re doing. It’s the equivalent of dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s. There are certain things that you really look for. Tim (Adams), our strength and conditioning guy, came in and we really asked him to look for sheer athleticism, to see if anything jumped out at him, that being his area of expertise. You can kind of tell whether a kid is willing to push himself to another level. Those are the kinds of things that you look at. Again, you’re not going to go through an entire year of work and have a kid — I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about Gretzky and Gary Roberts, and how they failed miserably at their first fitness tests. A lot of these kids are specifically coached on the specific drills that they do there. Some of them, it’s their first time and they struggle a little bit more, so you’ve got to be careful, making sure that a kid isn’t just coming to pass a specific test. I think Pierre McGuire said it best, too. There’s nobody chasing them around the ice there.”

Question: Is there ever anything, though, that makes you change your mind? You watch and talk to these kids all year, but is there ever a time when a kid does or says something in a combine situation that kind of makes you think, “Hmmm”?

FUTA: “In Drew’s case, we kind of set up that challenge for him, from a weight standpoint. So him just walking in, and us seeing the work that he had put in, was like a, `Hmmm, this kid is serious.’ And things happen with other kids. It seems like every year, for whatever reason, some kids make some pretty silly decisions away from the rink, going down the stretch. The U.S. development program has had a few kickers lately — and it could happen in any league — where kids are coming in and the same kid is being asked 30 questions about `the arrest’ or `the suspension’ or stuff like that. With Canada, they usually do very well at that (under-18) tournament. This year, they finished seventh out of, I think, 10 teams, so this a first chance to sit down with a couple key members of that team and find out what happened, from a leadership standpoint. Some of them were put in different roles of leadership, and we try to find out what happened there, whether it was a blip, or was it a chemistry thing? Were there some kids that battled injuries all year and just came back for that?

“I think that’s one of the keys. This draft has produced some kids that have been really hard to evaluate, due to injuries at some key times. These are some pretty high-profile kids. So we’re able to have our medical staff go over their stuff and make sure we’re not talking about things that are going to be lingering throughout a career, as opposed to just a freak accident or something like that.”

Question: Maybe it’s the nature of a scout, but it seems like you have to rely a lot on instinct. When you’re talking to these kids, and trying to get a read on their character and what kind of people they are, how much do you just have to trust yourself when it comes to making judgment calls?

FUTA: “We’re certainly gone through this process as a staff quite often. Dean has made quite clear, to us, his method of questioning and stuff like that. We know what he expects from us. We know the kind of dirt that we’ve got to brush aside. There are certain things that you’re going to hear that aren’t great, but you’ve got to weed through a lot of different things. I think you kind of become — you certainly think you become — very good at it. The thing we’re pretty consistent on is what it means to be a King. It’s such an imperfect science, drafting. Like Dean says, if you get 2 1/2 (NHL) players a year, you’re a Hall of Famer. You really think that there’s a bar set up, in terms of what it takes to be a King, and the expectations we have in terms of character, commitment and conditioning, turning that corner and being a part of it. It’s almost like you’ve got that checklist when you’re asking kids these questions. We have a better idea, now, of what our culture is all about. So when we’re asking questions, it’s not so much a `Do we fit into his plans?’ kind of thing. It’s more, `Do you fit into our plans?”’

Question: You mentioned being not as close to the stage this year. How will that impact things? Does that complicate things for you, at least in the first round, knowing that you need to have a deeper list, or do you pretty much do things the same way?

FUTA: “It’s weird. When you look at your final list, it’s almost funny. All these lists come out, and they’re so different. This year, I honestly think that once you get past the first three or four players, there’s going to be such a variety of players and lists, with people sorting through the Russian factor and different things, Europeans and stuff. So it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we’re getting a guy who we have ranked seventh or eighth on our list (at No. 19). We feel good about that, when it has happened in the past. We’ve sat back, as a staff, at the end of the day, when we got guys like Simmonds and Loktionov, guys like that, and looked at where we had them ranked as opposed to where we got them. We had them much, much higher. So you feel kind of good about that, when you seem to be on the right path.

“This year, you always take a look at some of these publications, and I’ve never seen such a variety, so much difference of opinion on players. Again, there’s a lot after that first, initial group. That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be some stars in the secondary group. It’s just a very common group, and you really have to do your homework to try to get that gem. There are a lot of different things that these kids bring to the table that give them better opportunities than others, I would say.”

Question: Then finally, could you just talk about what the next three weeks will be like for you? How much scouting is there still to do? When will you come out to L.A. and start preparing for things here?

FUTA: “Well, we left Toronto with another Santa Claus-like bag full of video (laughs). So I’m sure we’ll start looking over some things, and I’m sure we’ll have some conference calls with myself and Mark and Dean. Dean didn’t come to the combine, so he will have a look at the lists and he will challenge us and question us. Mark and I will talk daily and challenge each other on different thoughts that we have on different players. We’re both coming in on the 19th, and we’re going to have a day and have a good session on the goaltenders that we’ve got on the list, with (consultant) Kim Dillabaugh, just to make sure we’ve got our goalies slotted in the right spot. Again, it’s just touching up, more video stuff. It’s that part of the year. Your list is what it is. That’s why you’ve gone out, and that’s why you trust your area guys. Mark and myself, we pull the pieces together and respect the opinions of the area guys. We know that at the end of the day, it’s going to be us who makes the finishing touches and makes those picks. Then we do different practices with Dean, in terms of moving up or moving down, different scenarios so that there are no surprises when you get to the draft. Is there a certain player that you feel is worth having? We have those extra picks that Dean always seems to provide us, and that helps if you feel the need to move up.”

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