Well alot of those gatekeeper people are gone either by their own choice or by the choice of site admins.
But yeah, I always get a kick out of the people who act like being in NHL hockey-ops is like being a doctor or a lawyer. I've said it many times on this forum, I think there are many members here, myself included who could do a better job than Luc and Blake.
Why? Well if I (and I assume many others) were put in charge of the Kings the first thing I would do was to surround myself with the best and most qualified people. An extensive search for the best GM, Head Coach, Asst. GM, Director of Scouting, Director of Player Development. Any great executive will tell you he's only as good as the people he surrounds himself with. The LA Kings are not an organization with the best and most qualified people, they are a group of Luc and Rob's buddies and unfortunately for us the results of the past 7 years show that.
I've asked some of the strongest supporters of Luc and Blake here such as GBH (who I like more than many here) these questions a million times before, but here goes again.
Do you think Luc Robitaille was the most qualified person to be President? Was he qualified at all?
Do you think Rob Blake was the most qualified person to be GM? Was he qualified at all?
Do you believe this organization is a meritocracy when it comes to hiring of hockey-ops people?
Is it a coincidence that every major position in hockey-ops is filled by close friends of either Luc or Blake?
When Taylor was fired in 2006 the hockey-ops was completely gutted. New GM, New coach, New Scouting Director, New Development Director. When Luc's Palace Coup happened it basically resulted in two people losing their heads, the GM and the Coach.
The Kings won 1 playoff game in three seasons, it was enough to move on from a Cup winning coach and a cup winning GM (which I was ok with on both) but it wasn't enough to move on from anyone else?
The coup leader became the President
The Asst. GM became the GM
The Asst. Coach became the Head Coach
The Director of Personnel became the Asst. GM
The Director of Development became the Director of Personnel (despite garbage development results) and was later promoted to Asst. GM
A development coach became the Director of Development
The Director of Amateur Scouting was retained (despite mostly poor results) and has maintained his job for 7 seasons of mostly poor results
Only two names from that list left the franchise, Futa and Stevens, coincidently neither are known to be close buddies with Luc. or Blake. Their jobs were eventually filled by Rob Blake's best friend from college and Rob Blake's final head coach in the NHL.
It's just so comical and unprofessional when you think about it. I can't believe nobody at AEG corporate seems to give a crap about this. Sometimes I think hands off ownership is better, but for this franchise it's really not a good thing at all.
