On bended knee

It has become Michael Cammalleri’s signature shot…the one-timer from one knee that seems to generate good speed and accuracy on the shot. He’s been doing it, to some extent, throughout his career with the Kings, but it seems as though it’s becoming an increasingly bigger part of his game. I asked him about it, and he said it was something that initially developed during his final season at Michigan.

“I think I really developed it during the lockout year in the American league,” Cammalleri said. “I scored 46 goals that year and I’d say 30 of them were one-timers. It kind of became something that I just started going to. Brett Hull was kind of the first guy to really go down on one knee like that. He was the best one-timer of the puck, ever, and he was the first to really go down on one knee like that. So I guess I was just trying to mimic that. I’m not saying I shoot like Brett Hull, trust me. I’m just trying to do what I can. From there, it was just a matter of working on it.

“The one-knee thing, I don’t even mean to do it. It just kind of helps me get leverage on the puck and make sure that I get full contact and really bear down on my shot. I kind of just do it. I don’t really think about doing it. Most of the time I do it now. Sometimes I still don’t but it starts to become a habit. Sometimes I’ll even take a wrist shot and I feel my knee hit the ice and I think, `What am I doing?”’

Facebook Twitter Plusone Digg Reddit Stumbleupon Tumblr Email