from Pierre LeBrun of ESPN,
"We've become a big part of the community," Kings center Jeff Carter told ESPN.com on Friday. "There's some cracks in that now. It's on us to really buckle down. On the ice, we'll do our thing, we're a confident group. But off the ice, we need to build it back to where it was.''
If that message was fresh in Carter's mind, perhaps it's because just a few hours earlier, Kings general manager Dean Lombardi had delivered a half-hour speech to his players that, by all accounts, penetrated right to the heart of the matter.
"I told the players, 'We're going to learn from this, we're going to have the best development program off the ice just like we have on the ice, and that's that way we're going to go," Lombardi told ESPN.com. "And we're going to get stronger.'''
The Kings unveiled on Monday their Conduct Awareness Training Initiatives, a program that will be part education, part support system for players in areas of domestic violence and drug abuse. It's the culmination of a year's worth of research by a Kings organization determined not to ignore three player arrests that tarnished the image of what was a model organization in the NHL.
The question is, how will the players embrace the program?
Additional information on the program.
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