Carl Grundstrom made the Los Angeles Kings out of camp and then promptly sat as a healthy scratch for all but one game. Grundstrom played 11:11 in the 8-2 debacle against the Vancouver Canucks on October 9th. He recorded one assist, a primary assist on Tyler Toffoli’s goal, had two shots, and most notably, was only on the ice for one goal against at even strength. In a game where players were collecting -4s and -3s, that’s a feat, at least. [Insert proper diatribe here about how plus/minus isn’t a real evaluation of a player, blah blah blah, look, the Kings got scored on eight times and he wasn’t on the ice for 87.5% of them, let me just have this, okay?]
Sitting as a healthy scratch wasn’t doing much for Grundstrom, so he was reassigned to the Ontario Reign, where he promptly went on a scoring tear, recording seven points (five goals, two assists) over four games. He’s tied for team lead in goals, again, after having played only four games.
Good to have ya back, Grundy! pic.twitter.com/NTmOxhwaN5
— Ontario Reign (@ontarioreign) October 19, 2019
Top Grun! pic.twitter.com/l1KXlt4J05
— Ontario Reign (@ontarioreign) October 26, 2019
So the Kings called him back up today. No word yet on who will sit in his place, but you would expect that he didn’t get called back up just to be a healthy scratch.
Grundstrom displays a lot of the tenacity that it seems like has been missing from the Kings game lately, especially in battles along the boards.
Lines in practice today may not need anything, but it looks like we might be getting Chaos and I am all for it.
For whatever it’s worth, they just worked up and down ice in these forward groups, with several guys rotating through four-player lines:
Grundstrom-Kopitar-Carter
Iafallo-Kempe-Brown
Clifford-Lizotte-Wagner-Lewis
Prokhorkin-Amadio-Kovalchuk-Toffoli— Jon Rosen (@lakingsinsider) October 29, 2019