Stepping it up

By Rich Hammond on September 11, 2007 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

The intensity of practice was mentioned in a comment, and that -- more than the play of any individual player -- is the one thing that has really stood out to me in the first two days. It's much more noticable than in the last couple years. I attribute that to a couple things...1) The bitter taste of last season's failure...2) A sense of urgency, since camp is really compressed this year...3) The fact that these guys are in great shape. The rookies were pushed hard in their mini-camp last week, and a large percentage of the veterans took time to skate on their own.

J.P. Hoornstra writes about NHL and IHL hockey for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. He welcomes any and all dialogue on the finer points of hockey. E-mail J.P. at jp.hoornstra
@inlandnewspapers.com.

Jill Painter joined the Daily News in 2000 and during the last eight years she's covered the Dodgers, Cal State Northridge, UCLA, Kings, golf and everything in between. Even though she's from Colorado, she still freezes in the Staples Center press box but always manages to thaw her fingers in time to make deadline. E-mail Jill at jill.painter@dailynews
.com.