Year-In-Review – 15 – Brian Willsie

As we move along with the Reviews for the forwards, I’m not ignoring what has been going on for the past couple of days. I’m doing the exact opposite in fact; I can’t stop thinking about what has occurred and it really just has been a sad and disappointing past couple of days for me. But celebrating among family and friends on the 4th had been a good getaway for me. That being said, we’re going to move along with the reviews. I really hope that I can get all of these done before the summer is over actually.

To reiterate my first Review on the forwards, I’ll be writing these alphabetically and in reverse order. So we move along to Brian Willsie.

I think out of all of the players on the roster, he’s the one that did almost nothing on every shift. There’s not one thing I can remember that he really contributed to the games he was playing in because, as with every fringe player, he was scratched for a good number of games. Hilariously enough, when I looked at the Kings website for Willsie’s stats, he wasn’t even on the list!

If you take a close look, even Lauri Tukonen was on this list by playing ONE GAME!!! HAHAH!!!! I guess the web programmer feels the same way about Willsie as I do. So, thank you, web programmer, for providing me with a good round of laughs. I had to venture over to Yahoo sports to check out what he posted for last season. So he played in 53 games and got 4 goals, 8 assists for 12 points, and ended at a -8. 53 games?? Really? I can’t even remember how any of his goals looked. I’m really trying… but I got nothing…

The one thing that I CAN remember, and the one thing that I will always associate with Brian Willsie was that faithful day on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008. This was the game in which the Kings took the Ducks to the 6th round in the shootout near the end of the season. After the 1-1 game went into OT, I was already envisioning who I wanted to see out on the ice for the shootout. My top three were Dustin Brown, Anze Kopitar, and Patrick O’Sullivan. At that point in time, I was sick of seeing Michael Cammalleri in the top 3 with Sully having to come in the 4th round to win the game. Well, my wish had been granted, Sully was the 3rd shooter. But then Cammy was the 4th, and Alexander Frolov was the 5th. I had not expected the shootout to extend this far and had no clue who Crawford was going to send out onto the ice. IMAGINE MY SHOCK WHEN BRIAN WILLSIE HOPPED OVER THE BENCH. After 65 minutes of hockey, he had only played 5:54 spread over 8 shifts. He had absolutely no business being out on the ice at that point in time. Who would I have chosen next?

Lubomir Visnovsky.

Rob Blake.

Derek Armstrong.

Hell, Kevin Dallman.

Per Assistant GM, Ron Hextall, Willsie was in the top 3 shooters while with the Washington Capitals. Who knew! But how much is that weighed against how he was doing during the prior 65 minutes? According to Crawford’s gut feeling, none. The only other fact about Willsie that I will remember is that he was Alexander Ovechkin’s roommate when AO was a rookie.

I just tried to look at NHLSCAP.com to see what he was making last year on his 1-year contract signed last summer. Wouldn’t you know it, he’s not on this page either! He seems to be disappearing a la Nowhere Man style. Odd.