Kings Article: Rob Blake, Luc Robitaille Have Much To Build Upon As New Leadership for LA Kings

[FrozenRoyalty]

Finally had some free time to work on this story...

The @LAKings certainly have their problems, and now former President/General Manager Dean Lombardi was responsible for that. As a result, he was fired, along with head coach Darryl Sutter, on April 10.

Despite what some of you might think, even with those problems, the Kings' new leadership has a pretty solid foundation, infrastructure and culture to build upon, thanks to Lombardi.

Read all about it at...

Rob Blake, Luc Robitaille Have Much To Build Upon As New Leadership for LA Kings

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[PJ Kings Hockey]

Lombardi also instilled the current team culture throughout the franchise.

“That culture is in place and I respect that culture 100 percent,” Blake insisted. “It’s a culture that you know has success. Sometimes, you can come into an organization that hadn’t won, and they had this culture or that. This one has been proven here. If you look at Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty and Jeff Carter [who were present at the press conference], that culture has been molded into them. It’s not coming out, so we’ll build on that.”

“Our dressing room is probably as tight as it can get,” said Kopitar. “We certainly don’t want to change that. We want to stay with the same culture and the same mentality, and build on that. That’s what it’s all about. That’s where the memories are created.”

Obviously a difficult day for the core (photo 2):

But he got stuck on that and failed to see that once the Kings won the Stanley Cup in 2012, as it happens every time, other franchises began to build their teams and change their style of play in ways that would directly counteract and even neutralize what the Kings were doing. The result is where they are today—having won just one playoff game since they won the 2014 Stanley Cup—they’ve missed the playoffs twice in the last three seasons after winning two Stanley Cup Championships in three seasons, a major factor in both Lombardi and Sutter being fired.

That's a fair amount of money from playoff revenue that AEG Sports lost out on in 2015 and 2017, as well as a waste of prime years of Kopi, Carter, Drew and Quick.

A big reason for the lack of scoring was Lombardi’s loyalty, as evidenced by contracts that were either too expensive, too long, or both, to the likes of Marian Gaborik, Matt Greene and Trevor Lewis, not to mention failing to buy out the contract of Mike Richards. Each of those decisions ate up precious salary cap space that should have been used to improve the skill level of the team—as much as anything else, this led to Lombardi and Sutter’s downfall.

I think loyalty has a place in creating and maintaining a team, but it has to be applied responsibly. As the expected reward got larger (Cup vs. just making the playoffs or winning one round,) the gambling got riskier. Richards, Gaborik, Sekera, Lucic.

Sad that Lombardi's decision-making in the last few years didn't match the years before. Before our first Cup we get Carter, a Top 6 player with term who years later is a crucial member of the team. Now we just get rentals and say bye-bye to our prospects and draft picks. We'll see if Blake goes in a more effective direction.

Thanks for the article, Gann.

 

[kilowatt]

I wonder if it gets more difficult to trade as you win more. I'd be interested in hearing whether success has any effect on trading partners. Were the Kings perceived as a threat prior to 2012 and, if not, were they easier to trade with?

 

[tigermask48]

I wonder if it gets more difficult to trade as you win more. I'd be interested in hearing whether success has any effect on trading partners. Were the Kings perceived as a threat prior to 2012 and, if not, were they easier to trade with?

Chicago doesn't run into issues making trades every year. More often than not they still get around market value in trades.

The Kings were not a threat before 2012, they were a playoff team but not a favorite (though I think there was at least one expert that had them in the finals preseason.) As for being easier to trade with? Any rebuilding team is going to be seen as easier to trade with because more of your players are expendable and you aren't usually asking for nhl players in return but younger unestablished players. As any team becomes a contender, the cap space gets tighter, your core gets established, and you just have less options because you know what you have already in your top players (most of the time.)