In this photo taken on Tuesday, June 3, 2014, Staples Center music director Dieter Ruehle poses for a photo in Los Angeles. Ruehle will provide the musical soundtrack, from organ to rock snippets and goal celebrations, for the Los Angeles Kings home games during the NHL hockey Stanley Cup final against the New York Rangers. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Neil Davidson)

Playing the organ at Staples Center isn’t just a full-time job for Dieter Ruehle it’s a passion and a dream.

Since he was a kid, Ruehle wanted to blend his classical piano skills with his love of sports.

At the age of 12 he got to play the organ for part of a Kings game at the Great Western Forum. After that moment he found his calling.

“I totally fell in love with it,” Ruehle said.

At the age of 20 he was hired by the Kings to play their organ and since then his career has taken off. Ruehle, who holds the similar role with the Los Angeles Lakers, has gone to five Olympics and considered one of the top organists in hockey. Ruehle and Ray Castoldi, who plays the New York Rangers organ, went to the Sochi Olympics in 2014.

While Ruehle, 47, has his usual numbers he generally plays, he’s able to improvise and shift his playlist depending on the game. When the Kings played the Pittsburgh Penguins on Dec. 5, Ruehle played several Stone Temple Pilots songs as an homage to former lead singer Scott Weiland who died two days earlier.

If the Los Angeles jumbotron shows a celebrity, Ruehle can think quickly and look into his catalogue of around 500 songs to fit the moment.

“It helps having a good amount of songs to choose from, especially when you need to be spontaneous like that,” Ruehle said.

Those around the league notice when they hear music at Kings games.

"Dieter is one of the best organists in the league. Absolutely no question about it," said Josh Gold-Smith an NHL news editor with The Score, who also runs the Twitter handle Organist Alert. "I sometimes call Kings games 'Dieter Ruehle concerts' because his playing is such an important and entertaining element of the games themselves. Dieter has a great sense of both popular and traditional music. He does a terrific job adapting to different situations and is always thinking about the Kings' opponents. He'll play the "Game of Thrones" theme, the Throne Room theme from "Star Wars," then Journey and Tears for Fears and you're thinking, 'this is awesome, but he does this all the time.' Then, he'll do something timely like playing Stone Temple Pilots' "Sour Girl" as a tribute to the late Scott Weiland, or "Brass Bonanza" when the Carolina Hurricanes are in town."

NHL organists all notice at how Ruehle hones his craft.

"Certainly his Twitter lights up when he plays "Game of Thrones," said 'Krazy' Kyle Hankins, the organist for the Nashville Predators. "It helps to keep up to date with current events and then go deep into bands tunes. I'll do that and hope that people get it. Dieter does a great job at that."

We talked with Ruehle about the art of playing organ in the NHL, how he moved to the top of his craft and how he continues to be one of the standard bearers for organists around the NHL.

What is the day in the life of Dieter Ruehle like on a Kings game day?

I’ll do some prep at home, maybe practice for an hour or two hours. I’ll get to work around 2:30 p.m. and do some preparing and be all good to go before our 4:30 p.m. production meeting. What I mean by prep work is we have a rundown that sort of tells us what we’re doing in that game during the media timeouts. So I’ll mark up notes for that and be ready. Then we have the production meeting at 4:30 p.m. and we rehearse from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m. and I’ll play the organ for a bit and off we go.

Is there a go-to song you have?

I guess I like to lean on the Throne Room from "Star Wars." That’s one of my favorites, I guess being a "Star Wars" fan and all. I just try to play a variety of music.

How does someone become an organist for an NHL team? Tell me your story.

In my situation, I was interested when I was a kid. And I got a taste of it when I was 12, I was able to play at part of a Kings game and when I got to do that I totally fell in love with it. Then a few years later there was an opening with the indoor soccer team here, the LA Lazers. They hired me when I was 15, and that sort of got my foot in the door at the Forum. And five years later when there was an opening with the Kings, they reached out and I was hired when I was 20 years old and as they say, the rest is history.

What is your musical background?

I was a piano player. I took piano lessons when I was a kid, classical piano at age nine, and I was also a sports fan. Watching the games in person or on TV, I always noticed the organ, and it just always spoke to me and I was always very interested in what other organists were playing around the country. If you put two and two together with music training and my love of sports, I was like, ‘oh I want to do that’ and I’ve been fortunate to do that for all these years.

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