Byfield, Clarke look to meet high expectations
EL SEGUNDO » Nearly three dozen prospects and young Kings are soaking in the experience at development camp this week, but none carry greater prominence than center Quinton Byfield and defenseman Brandt Clarke.
The melange of young players encompasses every level of experience from tryout invitees — they include Southern California natives James Stefan, Quinn Emerson and Jack Blake — to relatively established NHL’ers like Arthur Kaliyev and Tobias Bjornfot.
Recent draftees like Francesco Pinelli, Sami Helenius and Jack Hughes all impressed at times in the second of four scrimmages this week, but Byfield and Clarke, selected No. 2 overall in 2020 and No. 8 overall in 2021, respectively, continued to have the heftiest presences on the ice.
“I’m at home, working out all summer. I took a week off and got right back in the swing of it, trying to add some weight,” said Byfield, who accumulated 46 games of NHL service time over the past two seasons. “My game just keeps on evolving and experience goes a long way.”
Byfield, 19, said he had been focusing not only on his physique but also his reads by watching film and, like any good Canadian hockey player, his golf game as well. Byfield has also been refining his skating technique, working with a private coach.
“A lot of times when I was skating before, I was all the way hunched over,” Byfield said. “Now I’m working on getting my knee back under me, getting my stride and using all my power.”
Byfield described this summer as a “big offseason” and felt he was “very close” to becoming the sort of impact player the Kings hoped for when they drafted him with the highest pick the franchise has held since it selected Drew Doughty second overall in 2008. Byfield was fettered last season by a broken ankle he sustained in a preseason game and a stint on a COVID protocolrelated absence, but occasionally integrated fully the size, power, finesse and skill that made him a prototypical prospect pivot.
Clarke, on the other hand, offers a mix of the unconventional and the preternatural. His poise, puck skills and steadiness on the back end are those of a player well beyond his 19 years of age, while his skating stance is distinctive and almost knock-kneed.
“He’s a really good hockey player. He’s got good hands and good vision,” Bjornfot said.
Last season, Clarke was one of the top defensemen in the Ontario Hockey League, quickly justifying his draft standing. Yet it was a pair of setbacks beyond his control that stole headlines: First he was left off Canada’s World Junior Championship squad for the second consecutive season, and then his campaign was cut short by an injury that caused him to miss the OHL playoffs. Clarke also received an eight-game suspension for a hit on Montreal Canadiens prospect Jan Mysak.
But overall, Clarke was the second-leading scorer in the OHL among defenseman on a per-game basis, and he made strides in his play without the puck to boot.
“My all-around game has taken a lot of steps. I still felt comfortable, like I was making a lot of plays with the puck on my stick,” Clarke said. “But something that the Kings were telling me and that I wanted to do personally was to take pride in shutting down those top guys across the league. I was matched up with them every single time. I think I
held my own and I excelled.”
Edler signs one-year contract extension
The Kings re-signed defenseman Alex Edler to a one-year contract worth $750,000 in base salary, with another $750,000 in potential incentives for games played, the team announced Tuesday.
Edler, 36, had spent his entire career with the Vancouver Canucks until last summer, when he became a free agent and signed a oneyear deal worth $3.5 million. He rewarded the Kings by making 41 appearances in which he scored 19 points and skated to a career-best plus-18 rating.
Perseverance and toughness had been trademarks of Edler’s career, and that was certainly true in his first campaign with the Kings. In December, he sustained a broken left ankle that put his season in jeopardy. However, he returned ahead of schedule in March, pressing himself into duty as the Kings juggled personnel on a banged-up blue line. General manager Rob Blake said Edler urged the coaching staff to reinsert him into the mix, even before he was near 100%, setting an example of character and passion for the rest of the roster.
“He was (out) four months, if you look at his ankle, there were two surgeries on both sides. He was coming back, but we really hadn’t progressed him to the point where we thought he was going to get into the lineup,” Blake said. “We had suffered multiple injuries on the back end. He went to Todd and he was the one that said he wanted to play.”