Archive: Brayden Schenn Excels With Blues As One of NHL's Most Dependable Players

St. Louis Blues forward Brayden Schenn has won a Stanley Cup championship, but as noted in this 2011 Future Watch story, his all-around talent might be just as impressive.

The St. Louis Blues have been fortunate to employ center Brayden Schenn for the past seven NHL seasons. 

The 32-year-old is a Stanley Cup champion, and since 2013-14, he’s been a no-brainer lock for 20 to 25 goals and 50 to 60 points. 

This year, Schennn has generated 13 goals and 30 points in 55 games – not all-star caliber, but the caliber of secondary scorer like Schenn is what still makes him so valuable. 

In this cover story from THN’s Future Watch magazine (dated March 1, 2011), writer Ken Campbell covered Schenn’s ascent to the NHL – a journey that began when the Los Angeles Kings drafted him fifth overall in 2009.

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At that point in his career, Schenn had played all nine games of his career with the Kings. He was the rookie of the year in the WHL in 2007-08. Big things were predicted for him, and Schenn told Campbell he was OK with spending time in the WHL (through the 2010-11 campaign), and he’d made the adjustment all young players have to make.

“I’m actually enjoying playing here,” Schenn said of playing back in the WHL. “At the start I felt the pressure, especially playing at home. The first couple of games I think I was trying to do a little too much and it took a couple of games to settle in, but ever since then it’s been going pretty well.”

All in all, Schenn’s road in the NHL has not been easy. Moving from the Kings to the Philadelphia Flyers and finally to the Blues, he’s matured into an all-around elite player. And even though the Kings might want to have Schenn back in the organization, the move to St. Louis took place because other teams than the Kings realized how reliable Schenn could be. In the end, he’s one of the most well-rounded players a team can have.

“This is a guy who has a mix of everything,” then-Kings director of player development Mike Futa said of Schenn. “He’s a guy who’s going to be hard to play against. He’s going to be responsible defensively and he can fight you and he can score on you. You just don’t find those guys all the time.”

BRAYDEN SCHENN

By Ken Campbell

March 1, 2011

Imagine being Brayden Schenn. You’ve just become the centerpiece of one of the biggest trades in junior hockey history. Your feet aren’t even on the ground yet and already the local radio station has written a song about you. Every pixel sign in town says, “Welcome Home, Brayden” and you’re coming to a first-place team that has mortgaged its future to get you in hopes of ending a championship drought that is 44 years old. The only thing keeping it from being longer is the fact the Western League didn’t exist before 1966-67.

Oh yeah, the city happens to be Saskatoon, the heartland of hockey and Schenn’s Saskatchewan-based hometown. Should Schenn and the rest of the Blades be unsuccessful in their goal of getting to the Memorial Cup, he’ll only have to hear about it all summer.

No pressure there. Really, no pressure at all.

“I’m actually enjoying playing here,” said Schenn, the No. 1 NHL-affiliated prospect in THN’s 2011 edition of Future Watch. “At the start I felt the pressure, especially playing at home. The first couple of games I think I was trying to do a little too much and it took a couple of games to settle in, but ever since then it’s been going pretty well. I’m having fun playing here and pulling on that sweater for the first time was pretty special.”

Now the song. The local DJ didn’t actually compose it himself. He basically rewrote the lyrics to a song called “Coming Home” by Diddy – the artist formerly known as P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, Puff, Puffy and Sean Combs – when Schenn was dealt to the Blades from the Brandon Wheat Kings in early January. A sampling:

He hear the Hips Wheat Kings,
He hate that song,
He lived in Brandon for far too long,
Another day, another dawn,
Another D-man with their pants down,
Do the math, he’s gone.
What’s he ‘posed to do when he looks at the stats,
Hometown’s in first, Brandon’s in last…

You get the idea. The bottom line is that in the last four months of his junior career before he joins the Los Angeles Kings and his older brother, Luke, in the NHL, Schenn has some very serious business to finish. Actually, he’s all about turning things around.

Schenn is expected to deliver a trophy to Saskatoon. And when the Kings took him fifth overall in the 2009 draft, director of player personnel Mike Futa talked about it as a “culture-changing draft” for the Kings, one in which they got Schenn with their first pick and Kyle Clifford with their second. In fact, Futa envisions Schenn stepping between Clifford and Wayne Simmonds for the Kings next season, giving them a line that can score some and be about as fun to play against as Ogie Ogilthorpe.

“He’s just a warrior,” Futa said of Schenn. “He has certainly showed our people – and made our scouting staff proud and made our scouting staff look good – that he’s going to be a special player once he gets there. He just has to stay healthy.”

And there’s the Rub A535 when it comes to a player such as Schenn. He often plays with reckless abandon and little regard for his own body. The fact he has been compared to Wendel Clark should be enough to throw a scare into everybody. The problem is that’s the style that gives him the time and space to create offense and makes him such an effective player. To temper that is to risk diminishing what makes him the player he is. But to allow it to continue unabated could result in a shortened career.

Schenn has already dealt with a knee injury in training camp, has experienced back spasms and played the last three games for Canada at the World Junior Championship with a separated shoulder. That didn’t stop him from tying the Canadian record for most points in a single WJC – eight goals and 18 points in seven games – or being named the tournament’s MVP and best forward. But it is unnerving.

In one game Futa watched recently, Schenn was carrying the puck through the neutral zone with his head down and was rocked with a thunderous hit. After collecting himself and heading to the dressing room, he came out for the next period no worse for wear. But Futa swears that Blades coach/GM Lorne Molleken, who had just given up four draft picks and two prospects to get him, was having a heart attack as Schenn went past him.

“You have to sometimes save your body and pick your spots or your shoulders are going to be all over the place by the time you’re 21,” Futa said. “When he took that hit, I thought it was his shoulder, I thought it was a concussion, I thought it was everything under the sun. After the game, he said to me, ‘You must have thought you were watching Eric Lindros there.’ And I said, ‘Well, when it happened to Lindros it was Scott Stevens. You’re very fortunate that wasn’t a guy like Scott Stevens coming the other way.’ ”

Schenn actually started the season with the Kings this year, but when players such as Anze Kopitar, Michal Handzus and Jarret Stoll are playing in front of you, it’s difficult to find ice time. The Kings dispatched Schenn to their American League affiliate for a two-week conditioning stint where he scored seven points in seven games before heading to Canada’s national junior team. In his first 13 games back in junior hockey, Schenn had 28 points. But it’s not really about the points for him right now. When the Kings returned him to junior, they did so with specific instructions to become a better player away from the puck and a 200-foot player. He has responded well to the demotion and even though he might still need some experience in the minors next season, is on track to be a King in the not-so-distant future.

“I’m just trying to get prepared as quickly as possible to play in the National Hockey League,” the 19-year-old said. “Playing in the playoffs and trying to win a WHL championship and a Memorial Cup I think would help me and give me some good experience. Defensive-zone positioning and reading the play were why they sent me down and I know that’s an area where I need to get better.”

Schenn has already been a part of two deep playoff runs with the Wheat Kings and played in the Memorial Cup last season, so he has a pretty good idea of what is ahead of him and his teammates. Which is exactly why Molleken cleaned out his cupboard to get Schenn for a long playoff run this season. All told, the Blades gave up their first and second round picks in this year’s bantam draft, their first round picks in both the bantam and Canadian Hockey League import draft in 2012 and two 15-year-old prospects who were their first two picks in last year’s bantam draft.

“I’ll be real, real honest with you by saying that if it weren’t Brayden Schenn, we would not have made a trade of this magnitude,” Molleken said. “This gave us an opportunity to bring arguably the best junior player in Canada back home to finish his junior career and it gives us a better opportunity to achieve our goal of winning a championship. But we paid a huge price. It’s a situation in this year’s draft where there are going to be teams that are going to pick four or five players before we get an opportunity to pick one.”

But the Blades are acquiring an enormous talent in return. Eleven of the 18 NHL scouts polled agreed, making Schenn their pick as the top NHL-affiliated prospect this season. Schenn certainly has an edge to his game, but what makes him such a good player is that he combines that with a great skill level. The Kings envision him as a second-line center who can score between 25 and 30 goals a season.

“I don’t think there’s a better player in the league as far as puck skills go and the offensive upside he brings to our team,” Molleken said. “The city has embraced Brayden because he’s a local hero. Everybody watched the world juniors and what he accomplished there and our fans have been waiting for our team to win a championship for a long, long time and having Brayden gives us a better chance to do that.”

The dividends for the Blades have been immediate. With Schenn in the lineup, the power play has gone from 18th in the league to 10th. Schenn is the kind of player who can control a game both from a physical and offensive standpoint and has the ability to make eye-popping plays at the junior level.

Having an older brother who has been through all of this before in the biggest hockey market in the world has undoubtedly helped. Luke Schenn entered the NHL as an 18-year-old and had a good rookie season, but took a step backward in 2009-10 before emerging as the Toronto Maple Leafs’ best defenseman this season. For that reason, the younger Schenn is well aware of the ups and downs a young player can face on the road to regular NHL employment. Knowing that has probably made him more hungry to succeed.

“He’s just a very driven kid,” Futa said. “And he’s a classy kid. He takes the game very seriously and he has a passion for it. I’m sure that sometimes he gets disappointed that he sees people that he’s better than already getting a start on their pro careers, but it makes him work that much harder.”

The Kings have had struggles of their own this season. Perhaps it’s because they read too many press clippings anointing them the NHL’s next great team, but there has certainly been a letdown in L.A. Perhaps a player such as Schenn is what is be needed to shake things up and give the Kings more of an edge. To be sure, he’s coming into an organization that is blessed with a plethora of young talent on the rise. Schenn is undoubtedly a big part of that future and while there was speculation earlier this season the Kings might part with their top prospect for a deal involving Jarome Iginla, Futa said he would be shocked to see Los Angeles deal its young star.

“This is a guy who has a mix of everything,” Futa said. “He’s a guy who’s going to be hard to play against. He’s going to be responsible defensively and he can fight you and he can score on you. You just don’t find those guys all the time.”

Schenn will have every opportunity to make the Kings next season, but sometimes there is a natural tendency for young players to think they’ve already made the roster because of everything they’ve accomplished as juniors. After the playoffs, this summer will be crucial for Schenn because he’ll have to come to camp next fall in the best shape of his life. His skating is not among the best, but it won’t hurt him at the NHL level because he does so many other things well. He likes to beat players 1-on-1 and make plays, so he has to remember to keep his legs moving if he wants to do the same thing against NHL defensemen that he does in junior hockey.

For his part, Schenn likes to think of himself along the lines of a Mike Richards. If he turned out to be that good at the NHL level, the Kings would be thrilled.

“He’s a leader and he works hard at both ends and he can kind of do it all,” Schenn said of Richards. “He can hit and score goals and stick up for teammates. That’s the kind of player I’d like to be, but that’s a pretty high standard right there.”

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