10 Days Of Dustin – Professionalism & Personality

I’ve worked for the Kings since 2008. Just typing those words is a bit of a shock to my system, so I’ll let you do the math on that one if you’re so inclined. That said, I am honored to join the throngs of people who have come out of the woodwork in the last week or so to sing their praises about Dustin Brown after having the privilege of knowing and working with him at any point throughout his distinguished career.

I can tell you from personal experience that Brownie is the consummate professional. My first few years with the club I was a member of the Ice Crew and we obviously had a unique behind-the-scenes perspective when it came to the players, game nights, and the organization in general. My most memorable Brownie memory from my Ice Crew days didn’t come from an appearance or during a game, it was, for lack of a better term, a bit of an accident. One night we were at STAPLES Center, as it was called back then, and we were prepping for a game. We were kicked out of our regular locker room, probably because of TV, and for the night were in one of the home basketball locker rooms. Because the front entrance to that room was in the player hallway where pre-game interviews were taking place, we had to use the back exit to get to one of our pre-game appearances. On this particular night a few of us ran out the door into a silent, unattended and unfamiliar back hallway in the depths of the arena. As we rounded a corner we were startled by a figure in a black hoodie with the hood over his head, sitting in a chair, hunched over with his head down. It wasn’t the Grim Reaper. It was Dustin Brown. We stopped dead in our tracks because we were so surprised, and he glanced up for a brief second, saw it was us, and bowed his head once more. We continued on our way. Later we learned that this was part of Dustin’s pre-game ritual. He took time before each game to sit in the quiet hallway, with minimal distractions, and mentally prepare. After that first Grim Reaper moment, we learned. Each subsequent time we used that locker room we were much more respectful and quiet coming into the back hallways. Dustin was always there, but never phased.

When I started covering the team in 2011, I got to know a different side of Dustin. Social media hadn’t quite broken through at that point, so right off the bat it was my job to bring out the players’ personalities and show their human side through my written and on-camera features. Something Kevin Westgarth said sums up my experience perfectly: “I don’t think he particularly likes being the center of attention, but he’s always there, he always shows up.”

This is Dustin Brown, and I can’t tell you how invaluable this quality is to members of the media whose job it is to tell the team’s stories (I once had a guy literally run from me!). It’s no secret that Dustin is more of a quiet guy, a leader by example who was rarely loud and didn’t ask for attention. But, whenever I was working on a feature, he never turned me away and always cooperated with entertaining answers to my questions, no matter how ridiculous they were and how much he may have wanted to roll his eyes at me.

Here are some fun Dustin Brown facts that I’ve gathered over the years (keep in mind each fact was true in the moment, but some of these are over a decade old!):

– If he could pick a teammate as a golf caddy, he would choose Scott Parse because Parse is a very serious guy who could play good golf.
– His favorite scary movie is “Shutter Island” and he would trust Matt Greene to make his Halloween costume.
– His go-to pre-game meal is pasta with salmon and he would trust Trevor Lewis to cook it because in the Lewis/Drew Doughty household, it could be assumed that Lewis did most of the cooking.
– He plays fantasy football, and said that in terms of fantasy hockey, Jonathan Quick should have himself on his team because “if I were him I’d be myself!”
– He once left his Christmas decor up until the end of January and thinks Drew Doughty is the teammate most likely to leave his up until Valentine’s Day. (Maybe we need a tree check at the Doughty household right about now?)
– He loved Tom & Jerry as a kid and thinks Jarret Stoll is his teammate with the most team spirit.
– Duncan Keith is the most difficult player he’s faced in the playoffs; Jonathan Quick is his teammate he’d never want to face in the playoffs.

While the overwhelming majority of my work is light-hearted in nature, back in 2011 I did get reaction on the tragic crash that killed the entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team, including Dustin’s former Kings teammate Pavol Demitra. Dustin had this to say about his late friend: “He was one of those guys where he would be very intense on the ice and he’d get mad at you if you didn’t give him the puck, but the second the game was over it was like nothing had ever happened. ‘Do you want to go for a beer? Let’s go do something.’ He was a happy-go-lucky guy, he was always having fun and at the same time he loved the game of hockey.” I feel like this quote illustrates Dustin’s range as a human being during what was a very low point for the hockey community.

While scouring my personal media collection for Brown-related treasures I did find a couple gems that I’m happy to finally share.

I can’t remember if I posted this photo previously, but I’ll post it here. This is from the day of the 2014 Cup parade and rally. I was helping to collect players for various Cup-related interviews in between the parade and the rally so I was “backstage” when the guys were lining up to be introduced to the fans. I stopped to snap this pic for obvious reasons and I feel like it’s relevant now because this simple but poignant moment in time was made possible by Dustin Brown and the incredible impact he had in captaining two Stanley Cup championships for the city of Los Angeles – not to mention my acquisition of a Stanley Cup ring with my name on it (11-year-old me is still freaking out about that!). Sorry not sorry to those two photographers whose photos I totally bombed – there are zero people in this world who would have passed up that photo op, and, let’s face it, I got the better photo.

Then there’s this amazing clip from my feature where I got the players to tell me how they lost their teeth in a “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” video we used for Christmas one year. As funny as it is all on its own, the best part is the beginning of this clip, which I actually edited OUT of the original feature. Like I said, Brownie was cooperatively entertaining when he needed to be!

I’m honored to be in a position to share these anecdotes about one of the greatest LA Kings of all time. I was born and raised in SoCal and really have been a Kings fan since I was 11 (sorry friends, no math here either!), so to have a front-row seat for the majority of Dustin Brown’s career has been a privilege. From what I’ve seen and experienced first-hand, he is every bit the human being and the professional that the photos, videos, billboards, testimonials and accolades suggest, and I’m looking forward to watching his number deservedly ascend to the rafters on Saturday.

10 Days Of Dustin, Archives
2/1 – The Milestones
2/2 – The Photos
2/3 – The Videos
2/4 – The Person
2/5 – The Player
2/6 – The Announcements