Plenty Line Up for the Defense

As in every training camp, there is an arithmetic lesson to be learned from the Kings, who have to fill slots vacated by the departure of defensemen Garry Galley and Sean O’Donnell.

The Kings figure to retain seven defensemen--though Coach Andy Murray said Sunday he was mulling keeping eight--and five of those spots will be occupied by Rob Blake, Mathieu Schneider, Mattias Norstrom, Jere Karalahti and Aki Berg.

Five players are competing for the other two openings: Rich Brennan, Jaroslav Modry, Philippe Boucher, Lubomir Visnovsky and Andrea Lilja, with Michael Pudlick given an outside chance.

“We’ve got some real competition,” Murray said.

Among the chief combatants is Brennan, who is in a familiar position. Claimed by the Kings in last year’s waiver draft, he played in Lowell last season, but has been in the NHL with Colorado (two games), San Jose (11 games) and the New York Rangers (24 games).

He’s called an “offensive defenseman” because of his success in the minor leagues--he had 15 goals and 30 assists in 66 games at Lowell--but has only two goals in his 37 NHL games.

“I think he realizes that one of the defensemen we lost was Sean O’Donnell, and he’s trying to be that guy,” Murray said. “We feel Mathieu Schneider will fill the [offensive] role Garry Galley played last year.”

Brennan just wants an NHL job.

“I’m not trying to play like Garry Galley or play like Sean O’Donnell,” he said. “I’m trying to play like Rich Brennan.”

So far in camp, that appears to be like a player who hits everything in skates and tries to keep from looking over his shoulder. It’s difficult when your professional life is spent on a bubble year after year.

“You wonder if you can have a bad shift or a bad practice or a bad [exhibition] game,” he said. “But you know nobody’s perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. The key is to recover from the mistake and make a good play, instead of making two more mistakes.”

Scrimmages, which begin today at El Segundo; and exhibitions, which begin Thursday at Phoenix, will go a long way toward determining who gets defensemen jobs Nos. 6 and 7.

“I think it’s going to be a physical scrimmage,” Murray said of today’s workout. “There are some major battles for jobs.”

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One job left open is that of center Jozef Stumpel, who is listed as “AWOL” on the Kings’ depth chart because he has not signed a contract.

The Kings received a proposal from Stumpel’s agent, Arizona-based Benji Robins, on Saturday and immediately countered. Dave Taylor, the Kings’ senior vice president and general manager, said the two sides remain far apart. Neither will discuss particulars.

Stumpel is seeking to better a contract that paid him $1.75 million last season, but the Kings are pointing out that he has lost significant playing time in each of the last two seasons because of injury.