Leafs’ Kozun used to fighting uphill battles
Undersized forward has impressed team in pre-season
At 5-foot-8 and 167 pounds, Brandon Kozun does not cut the figure of a prototypical fourth-line forward. For one, he is almost a foot shorter and one hundred pounds lighter than Frazer McLaren. And unlike Colton Orr, Kozun can skate and score. What he does not do is hit or fight.
Well, that last part is not entirely true.
“I’ve done it before so if they need me to I can,” the Toronto Maple Leafs training camp hopeful said of fighting. “Last year. You can ask my Marlies teammates about that. It was funny.”
Type Kozun’s name in hockeyfights.com, a web site that exists almost solely to document the career exploits of McLaren and Orr, and nothing shows up. But Korbinian Holzer said he remembers the time last season when his teammate dropped the gloves.
“It was actually pretty funny,” said Holzer. “One of our guys got hit cutting through the neutral zone in Syracuse by one of their bigger defenceman. By the time he got up, Kozie’s so fast that he came flying from the other side and tried to run the guy. But he kind of bounced off like a little fly at first. It was pretty funny. He got right back up and started throwing them. It was pretty impressive to see, but kind of a blooper thing too.”
So maybe hitting and fighting are not Kozun’s strong suits. Which is fine, because if the diminutive forward — “you can stretch him to 5-foot-9,” joked head coach Randy Carlyle — is going to make the team it will not be as a your typical enforcer. Instead, depending on the opponent, Carlyle said that it is possible to have a fourth line that provides energy and secondary scoring.
If, for instance, the Leafs are playing the San Jose Sharks, who have Jon Scott on their roster, then it might make sense to dress Orr. But against a team like the Montreal Canadiens, who no longer have George Parros, there are benefits to having what Holzer called “an energizer bunny” in the lineup to play meaningful minutes.
It does not mean that the enforcer is extinct — just that his role has become endangered.
“The game does evolve,” said Carlyle. “There are roles that are going to change right from the top group- ing of players down to your 12th forward. And there are certain situations that call for speed and skill and there are other situations where the other assets of physical and grit does take precedent.”
Kozun, who scored seven goals and 17 points in 32 games after being traded to the Marlies last season, considers his skating to be his strongest asset. When he was growing up in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he was such a natural that Wayne Gretzky asked Kozun to work with his son Ty.
“For me, if I’m not skating, I’m not very valuable,” said the 24-yearold. “If you know how to use it in the right ways, it can help you.”
Carlyle said Kozun “skates with a purpose,” meaning he uses his speed to take the puck hard to the net or to be first on the forecheck. The Leafs have used him on the penalty kill, where Kozun jumped on a loose puck for a breakaway opportunity against the Detroit Red Wings earlier this week, and where assistant coach Steve Spott said the team “wants to be aggressive up the ice.”
“When I met with him last year I told him I thought he could play in the National Hockey League on the fourth line,” said Spott, who coached Kozun last year with the Marlies and at the world junior championship. “I’m a believer that you have to have different lineups depending on who you’re playing on any given night. He gives you an element of speed.”
“I’m sure you guys are seeing the same thing,” Carlyle said of Kozun, who has one goal and one assist in five exhibition games and has outplayed several veterans for one of the remaining roster spots. “If he continues to show that type of effort and that type of commitment, it’s going to make a difficult decision for us.”
A sixth-round pick by the Los Angeles Kings in 2009 — he went undrafted the year before — Kozun is used to being overlooked. This is a player who scored 108 and 107 points in back-to-back years with the Calgary Hitmen, had seven points in six games at the 2010 world juniors and scored 20 or more goals in each of his first three years in the minors.
But this is the first time an NHL team has given Kozun a legitimate chance. He has never lasted this long at training camp or played in this many exhibition games. He has still not even played in a regular season game.
Part of that is because he was previously with a Kings organization that was deep with similarly skilled prospects like Tyler Toffoli and Tanner Pearson. But the other part is that teams do not tend to look past physical stats. For every Brian Gionta and Nathan Gerbe are hundreds of players who are 5-foot-9 or shorter that never get an opportunity. That is, until now. “I think as a smaller guy you always have an uphill battle,” said Kozun. “On the other hand, I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve gotten to where I’ve gotten today.”