Dustin Brown - Al Murray - Kevin Gilmore: Summer, 2003

I’m here with Dustin Brown, the Kings first selection, 13th overall in this year’s NHL Entry draft, and first off, congratulations on your selection.

DB: Thank you.

You were obviously interviewed by many NHL clubs heading towards this draft day. Did anything stand out in your mind about the Kings organization from your interview with them?

DB: You know, I thought that they were one of the teams that were more interested. They showed more interest in me than others. So, there were maybe three or four teams that showed more interest in me and the Kings were one of them so I knew I had a pretty good shot at getting selected by LA if I fell back and was available.

Have you ever been to Los Angeles?

DB: No.

Looking forward to it this summer?

DB: Yeah, a little bit (big smile)

John Stanton and Al Murray both told me that you will be given every opportunity to make the Kings this coming season. What are your expectations coming into your first NHL training camp?

DB: I’m just gonna try to go in there and prove that I can play. I haven’t really looked at the team and who they have. I’m really excited about the opportunity and think I have a good shot.

It should be a pretty interesting and competitive situation for you.

Have you ever scored a goal against (Kings 3rd round selection) Ryan Munce?

DB: Uh, yeah, actually I had a three goal game against him in the playoffs this past year.

Did you get a chance to joke with him about that yet?

DB: Uh, no, we haven’t really had much of a chance to talk much yet, but I’m sure we will though (more big smiles.)

I heard you and the families of all of yesterday’s Kings draft picks had a really nice dinner last night.

DB: Yeah, it was really good. All of the draft picks, the families and the Kings organization were there. It was a really good night. Good food. Got to mingle with everyone a little bit, and start to know each other a little bit, so it was really good.

Give us your first impressions on the other two first round selections by the Kings, Brian Boyle and Jeff Tambellini.

DB: Well, I knew both of them before hand, not personally but I’d played against a few of them so I had a little bit of idea who they were. They seem like nice kids off the ice and they’re obviously pretty good players on the ice!

And now the three of you have each other’s backs (my turn to smile.)

DB: Yeah!

Thanks for taking a minute to chat with me. We’re at www.letsgokings.com and we are one of the most rabid fan sites you’re going to find in all of hockey, so check it out some time… but don’t take anything too personally!

DB: All right, thank you!


We began our final chat with Al Murray by asking… “Is it over? Or, has it just begun?”

AM: It’s really just one step and now let’s see what happens.

Can you tell me something about Esa Pirnes, the Finnish player you drafted in the 6th round, trading both 7th round picks to get that slot? I know he was born in 1977.

AM: Yeah, he was a guy that has continued to improve. He’s at the point now where he was on the Finnish national team this year. Dave (Taylor) and Robbie (Laird - Director of Pro Scouting and European Evaluation) scouted him at the World Championships, as well as Andy (Murray) and he really has a chance to come in and play for our team next year.

Has he expressed intentions of coming to North America this season?

AM: We called him right before we made the pick, and he’s interested now. It’s one thing to be interested, but I think for his agent to let him sign… well, we have a start on it and we will see how it all works out.

Is that why you specifically made the deal with Nashville to get the pick in the 6th round?

AM: Yes.

Do you feel someone else may have actually been planning on picking Pirnes?

AM: The way our list went… some years your list lasts for a long time and we thought we had a really good list of players coming into today (*day two… rounds 4-9) and we thought we would get a couple of real good guys, and then we just got wiped right out in the fourth round. Like everybody we liked, everybody else liked too! It was unbelievable, it was going Bang, Bang, Bang…

You had mentioned last night there were two guys that you had your eye on to start today, and obviously they weren’t there for you…

AM: (Laughs) So, you know, we… at that point decided that this was the guy (Pirnes) we wanted to get. We didn’t want to let him get away, so we went at him and Dave and Robbie made that decision. Hopefully he can come in and contribute right away, or after a short time in the minors, come up and play.

As I was sitting here right before the Brady Murray pick, it became apparent that the team was going to make the pick because of all the jocular expressions, smiles, handshakes and pats on Coach Murray’s back immediately preceding the announcement. Did you get him at the right time?

AM: We never moved Brady one spot up the list. We had him exactly at the right place. We never considered moving up to get him because we had other people ahead of him, and we took him where we felt he merited being selected, so it was great for everybody. It doesn’t always work that way. Andy’s coached other kids that he’s had a very strong affinity to… Ben Eaves (Pittsburgh’s 4th selection, 2001 draft) … Andy was very high on Ben, but we had two players ahead of Ben on our lists and we never jumped him over those two to select him. We stayed true to our list, as we did today. It’s nice when it works out this way, because that’s the way he earns it. He’s got to be in the right spot or it cheapens the whole process. Right from the minute we talked about this last summer, does he want to be involved in this with us, and they (Brady/Andy) said “yes, wherever you think he belongs,” and both Brady and Andy were very clear on that. So, Andy was nervous last night, he was interested as to where we had him, and how many guys were still ahead of him. You know, he’s a dad so he was working us a little bit, but in a fun way. Never put any immediate pressure on us, and we took him where he deserved to go!

How about these late round King selections that we don’t know much about?

AM: They’re players that on our list, we mesh who we feel are the best players, and this year that list stopped at 69 players. So after we mesh those 69 there was a cutoff, then there we have all of our scouts, on one page, a list of the players our Quebec scout likes, our Ontario scout, our Western scout, our College scouts and our European scouts. Then last night we had a meeting where we had each of these scouts identify two to four key players that they would like to acquire out of their particular area. And then, as the players are getting selected, we took the highest ranked player that all of our guys liked, and every player we took was somebody that one of our guys had highlighted. Somebody from our staff really likes every player that we took. Most of them are long term projects and most of them are going to colleges and we’ll see how they turn out, but we’re happy to get them all.

I was going to ask you, do scouts get frustrated sometimes when you don’t select a particular player they may be high on?

AM: Absolutely!

You’re in charge of a number of people and have to manage their individual personalities as well as their work ethic…

AM: …and they work VERY HARD for us, and they spend a lot of nights… There are several guys at this table that wound up with no one selected from all their hard work, but they are a part of the LA Kings, and they just hope that we got the best players, and they trust that we did. We have a great staff, there’s probably one player left on our list that we would have liked to have picked, but he wasn’t a highlighted guy last night so now somebody else might pick him up as the draft closes out. We got the highlighted guys from last night, and that’s the way we wanted to do it, so it worked out terrific for us!

So, giving up the two picks for the one, you didn’t feel like you were losing out on a player, because you got the guy you wanted.

AM: Exactly.

Well, I had a great time and I have thank you again for all of the valuable insight you’ve shared with the letsgokings.com readers.

AM: It’s nice to have met and spoken with you.

Now I know I have to start thinking about Raleigh (2004 Draft site.)

AM: Absolutely. Raleigh is another place I’ve never been to, so I don’t know what it’s like but hopefully we will see you there, or at Staples this coming season.

I think you can be sure you will see me at Staples this coming season. Thanks, Al.


Kevin Gilmore is the Assistant General Manager for the Los Angeles Kings. Watching the Kings draft table, you immediately recognize Kevin as hard working, and fast thinking. As the draft wound down, I called to him from the “cheap seats” (actually I was in the first row, but it sounds better to say “cheap seats”) and introduced myself as a season seat holder and a representative of LGK. Kevin was pleased to hear I was the former, and was most familiar with the latter, saying that he does check the site out from time to time. One of his most recent experiences with LGK was signing on from Toronto on the day the Kings acquired goaltender Roman Cechmanek, to see how the fan reaction was. For the most part, he was pleased.

The first question I asked Kevin was if he had any insight regarding Finnish draftee, Esa Pirnes.

KG: I know about this situation, and I can talk about him. He’s a kid that you can call a late bloomer in the sense that he’s been in Finland for a while, and this year was really his breakthrough year. He had a pretty good regular season and then led his team in scoring in the playoffs. It was also his first time on the Finnish World Championship team, and he also played in the Sweden Games. So he’s a kid that we think can come in and challenge for a spot.

And, his intentions are to come to North America this coming season?

KG: We’ve talked to him already. We called him from the draft table and all he wants is a chance. He said he’d like to come over here, and is willing to spend some time in Manchester if he has to, but he feels he’s ready at this point in his career to come over to the NHL and prove he can play.

He’s 26, he’s about 6 feet tall, and in the moments after you drafted him, I was able to get via the internet a lot of information about him. Does the internet make your job that much easier, and how does it help or hurt to know that the fans can put you and this information under the microscope within minutes of it becoming available? (Give me 10 minutes and I can probably tell you what Esa Pirnes had for breakfast this morning.)

KG: (Laughs.) ABSOLUTELY! It’s great for us in the sense that it gives us so much more information, and, of course it’s great for the fans they can immediately access the information. Years ago you’d sit and go “who is this guy?” and you really wouldn’t know until he showed up at training camp and you got his bio. Now you can go on the internet, see his face probably, read all his stats, get to know a lot about him, and that’s great for the fans.

Well, you know, back in the mid 70s when the Kings drafted some kid out of Clarkson College, the most ardent LA hockey fans didn’t have much information about a late round pick who ended up making quite a splash in the National Hockey League (and still does to this day!)

KG: Yeah (laughs) no one knew who he was… Who is this guy? Dave Taylor? (Lots of laughs)

I know that a lot of the letsgokings.com readers had a chance to come to the prospect camp last summer and get a first hand look at Brady Murray. Aside from being the coach’s son, people are raving about this kid’s real talent.

KG: We’re definitely excited about that too. It’s tough because you come into the draft and you want to be very objective about the way you’re perceived at the draft, and while the temptation’s there once in a while to say “Oh, maybe we can trade up,” but we got him where we thought we could get him, and we’re real pleased with that. He’s a great kid. People have seen him and he’s going to get better. He’s going to a great program in North Dakota.

So, we have Brady going to North Dakota, Big Brian Boyle going to Boston College…

KG: Yes, and our late round pick Marty Guerin is going to Miami-Ohio…

I didn’t know too much about him or the kid, Mike Sullivan…

KG: Sullivan is going to Clarkson, Dave Taylor’s alma mater and will be coached by Greg Dreschel (Dreschel is leaving the Kings organization for the coaching slot this season.) And, actually, we just found out that the Guerin kid was born in Manchester, NH, so that’s an interesting twist we didn’t know.

Kevin, thanks very much. I know you want to get out of here and I appreciate getting to meet you and having a chance to chat with you. Congratulations on a successful 2003 draft.

KG: You’re very welcome!


Repost from a file found on my hard drive dated June, 2003