Could this be considered the last great trade that Lombardi made that paid dividends for the Kings?
He also acquired McNabb from Buffalo that same day and that trade turned out to be a pretty decent one (although the Lintuniemi pick with one of those seconds turned out to be a worthless selection).
Without a doubt Lombardi’s last good trade.
I think Sekera could have become a very good defenseman within our system given enough time. We also could have made the playoffs if he doesn’t go down with the injury. Ton of what ifs surrounding that cursed 14/15 season.
Unfortunately for Sekera, he was overpaid by about a million, and has just never lived up to the cap hit.
Pretty much everything else post-2014 was garbage, though.
15/16 was the real time for Lombardi to start a true retool. The Lucic trade was a desperation move through and through, similar to Blake’s Kovalchuk signing. Not a retool move.
Controversially, Lombardi could have moved Carter out for some significant assets in the summer of 2015. Carter was 29 at the time. Stockpile for a year or two lull like Boston did during the exact same time span. Re-emerge in 16/17 with some youth injected back into the lineup.
Lombardi just never knew how to separate the off-ice scandals from the on-ice failures. It was too easy for him to blame everything on the off-ice BS. He wasn’t capable of seeing that it was all correlation, not causation. That was his biggest failure as a GM post-2014.