Rob Blake’s Media Availability – Full Video + Notes on Defense, Trades, Clarke, Byfield, Schedule

Yesterday morning, Kings General Manager Rob Blake addressed the media on a variety of topics, following a day on which he addressed the team and a day on which goaltender Cal Petersen was placed on waivers and eventually assigned to the AHL to get steady game action. More on Blake’s thoughts on Petersen HERE, and more on Wednesday’s team meeting HERE.

As you’ll see in the above video, the bulk of the conversation yesterday pertained to Petersen, his status and the reasoning surrounding the decision. A few of those quotes were shared yesterday in the article linked above and the rest are available in the video embedded above. At this time, Petersen is with Ontario and likely to start tonight as the Reign host Colorado at Toyota Arena. As things potentially change with his status, we’ll provide updates here.

A few other storylines from yesterday’s conversation, however, shared below –

Talking Trades
Blake was asked about the notion of potentially making a trade to potentially help as a part of the solution to the inconsistency with the group. Blake was clear that the Kings won’t make a trade just to make a trade.

“I don’t think we’re going to trade just to do something,” he said. “We’re constantly looking at different solutions to try to go back to the consistency level, we’ve got to find that.”

When asked about a trade regarding the goaltending specifically, it was clear that it wasn’t a focal point at this time.

First-Round Focus
A couple of questions surrounding the futures of Brandt Clarke and Quinton Byfield, both of whom broke camp with the big club but have combined to play in just one NHL game during the month of November.

Clarke has played in 14 professional games – 9 with the Kings and 5 with the Reign – and has been a healthy scratch at the NHL level over the last couple of games since his conditioning loan ended with Ontario. Blake spoke about the upcoming World Junior Championships and the decision the Kings will need to make regarding Clarke surrounding that tournament. With impending travel for the group to Ottawa on Monday to begin an extended trip, Blake noted that the timing is relatively convenient on that front, and a decision would likely come around that time.

Blake on Brandt Clarke
The idea in the American League was to get some games for him. Obviously with the World Juniors coming up, we have a decision to make here within the next few days. We’ve had calls, multiple calls, with Hockey Canada discussing that and Brandt included. We travel I think on Monday, back to Ottawa and Toronto in that area when Hockey Canada’s camp would start up, so we’ll have a look at those things there for next week.

Regarding Byfield, he played the first eight games of the season with the Kings but caught an illness in late-October that caused him to miss several games as he lost a substantial amount of weight. Once recovered, Byfield was assigned to Ontario for game action and has now skated in eight games with the Reign. Byfield tallied five points (2-3-5) last week and as Blake noted, he’s starting to produce offensively. Blake’s comment on Byfield is below.

Blake on Quinton Byfield
He’s been good, going to a few games live in the past week and everything, I think on the offensive side of things, you see a little bit of that production and handling the more minutes and everything. It is a spot where he can work on a lot of aspects of his game in multiple minutes down there.

Defensive Rotation & Thoughts
Two sides to this story.

First, there’s the notion of how Blake views the defense at the moment. With the team’s struggles as a whole on the defensive side of the puck, which are not specific to the defensemen, he was asked if he believes that the current unit is too offensively focused this season. He doesn’t believe that they are, indicating something we’ve heard from players and coaches, that the Kings would like more offensive production overall from the blue line, though not at the expense of defensive stability.

“No, I wouldn’t say we’re too offensive, there is a balance there, I think we would like a little more offense out of our defense at times, I’m not sure we’re too offensive-minded.”

That came back to the notion of inconsistency, something we’ve obviously heard several times throughout the early part of the season. Blake pointed to mistakes being made at difficult times in games and overall team play, pointing back to the team’s structure last season as the bar this season’s team is capable of reaching.

“I think part of our inconsistency is mistakes at tough times, not just defense, overall team play. I think last year, our team structure defensively was very good by the end of the year and I think that we’re still capable of getting that level.”

On a different side of the backend, we’ve now seen the trio of Tobias Bjornfot, Jacob Moverare and Jordan Spence moved up and down between the NHL and AHL. Blake gave his insight as to the why and how of the moves.

Blake on seeing Tobias Bjornfot, Jacob Moverare & Jordan Spence at various times
Moverare got in for a game or two, Jordan was up for a short period of time there the last couple of days and back down and now Toby’s back in that mix. We’ll see how the lineup shakes out, but those guys have been doing a real good job in Ontario. Part of the reason we move them around a little bit is that we don’t want any of them sitting for an extended period of time. So, you can bring one up as a seventh D for two or three weeks, but I’m not sure it was the right thing when we had the ability to put them down and play games.

Lastly, Blake was asked about his team’s early-season schedule and how he views its impact when it comes to how the Kings have performed here early in the season. His full quote below –

Blake on the team’s early season schedule and it’s impact on early-season results
Well, there’s things we’re looking at it. For sure, we’ve played a lot of games, practice time has been limited in between that. We haven’t played as many back-to-backs or situations that we would have last year, so that adds another game where you may have had a practice day instead of playing the two games, but everybody’s dealing with scheduling. We have maybe three more games or four more games than the least played in the league, so not a big discrepancy. We’ve started Tuesday instead of Thursday, which increased the one more game than other teams.

Reign game recap to follow, with the expectation at this time being that it will be Petersen’s first AHL start since February 2020. An important first step for a player the Kings are hopeful will continue to be a contributor as the season moves along. Here’s to hoping he can be.