[sureLoss]

Kevin Gravel is a much better prospect than Young and the Kings haven't signed him to an NHL deal yet. They signed him to an AHL deal, but that doesn't prevent him from signing an NHL deal with another team after August 15th.

6'4'' 200lbs L shooting D man
Former 2010 5th round pick of the LA Kings.
http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=35674

Recently finished his senior year of college. Used to be a very highly touted defensive d prospect until the curious matter of the Kings making him earn an NHL contract...

http://mayorsmanor.com/2014/04/kings...t-pro-debut-2/

On coming to Manchester on an amateur tryout and not having an NHL contract:
“Pretty much, coming here, they wanted one last look at me. I took the ATO. They said [to] come in here and show that you can make the transition to being a pro, and we’ll go from there. I don’t really know. [I'm] just coming here to work hard, and keep my mouth shut, and try to play well on the ice. Hopefully things work out well for me.”

And this is what the LA Kings had to say about him just 5 months ago:
http://kings.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=701606

Yet, scouts and those who follow the game closely will tell you Gravel has a far better comparable than any of the names just mentioned.

Enter Robert John Scuderi, fifth round selection in 1998 out of Boston College.

"Now you've got it, that’s the comparison for Gravel," said Mark Yannetti, Co-Director of Amateur Scouting for the Kings.

Hold on though. Before you get a mental image of blood dripping down Scuderi's face in Game 6 of the 2012 Stanley Cup Final, slow your roll just a bit. Gravel doesn't have that hard of an edge.

"I think the way that Kevin plays right now, that might be a more...," Yannetti paused, choosing his next words carefully. "Scuderi’s a little more of a hardened, I don’t want to use the word ‘warrior,’ because I don’t like the word. If people are warriors, if they screw up, they die. People who are soldiers, they’re fighting for something different than an NHL guy is. When you talk about sandpaper and grit, I don’t see [Gravel] having Scuds’ sandpaper or grit yet. Scuds didn't have that at Boston College though, and he didn't have that in the minors, or his first three years in Pittsburgh. Scuderi in L.A., was not the Scuderi early on in his career, but something changed. He was never soft, but something changed in him."

Quote:
"I actually think that Kevin Gravel is very undervalued for what he could end up becoming in the NHL someday," Yannetti remarked. "You can go with the adage that there are 30 D1s because there are 30 teams, but there aren’t. There’s only eight to 10. I think the same can be said for D5s and D6s. You get a lot of D5s and D6s who are vanilla, just parts, that don’t fit the role the way that a certain team, or the way that the L.A. Kings want the role fit. You see a guy like this, and he’s not vanilla. He can skate, he can make a play. He’s very long in terms of the way that he defends. If he hits his potential physically, he might be 225 to 230 pounds. So, now you’ve got a guy who defines himself in that role if he hits."

Once he got going, Yannetti gave a sermon on Gravel reminiscent of a top athlete's representative on the eve of Free Agency.

"He defends long. There are plenty of six foot five guys, plenty of six foot three guys, who don’t defend long. He uses his stick with little subtleties, creating a defensive perimeter. If you watch the defensemen in the minors and in the NHL, they allow forwards to stickhandle in what I call their defensive triangle. It’s like a boxer’s reach. If a boxer has a great reach and he doesn’t use his jab, guys can come inside and start busting him up. Same with a hockey defenseman. If he has a great reach, but a lazy stick, or he holds it too close to his body, or he’s not active with it, guys can stickhandle inside his triangle, which now turns him from a 6-foot-5 defenseman to a 6-foot defenseman, no matter how physical he is. With Kevin, I saw that he defended long. I thought he defended long against the rush and I thought that he defended long in the zone, in the defensive half-court. I saw hints of a complete defensive game, where he might not have been as physical as some guys, but he established the same type of perimeter, just in a different way."

Could be a matter of the Kings thinking he might be a longer term project to the NHL... they still have a few other defensive prospects that might be crowding him out. At the very least the King's organization is split on him.