Stevens and Nachbaur Fired

[KINGS17]

I find more fault in the GM who kept the cupboard barren and dealt away a number of high draft picks away for quick fixes versus the number one center who plays half a game and carries the most burden of any forward in the league.

Dean Lombardi definitely made mistakes. I don't recall your stance on the Lucic deal at the time of the trade, but many here were applauding it. Pundits from around the league were saying the Lucic, Kopitar, Gaborik line was going to destroy other teams, but it didn't happen. I didn't particularly like the deal.

I was in favor of the move to get Sekera, but bad luck with his injury, and primarily very poor seasons from Kopitar, Brown, Richards, and Stoll doomed the 2014-15 Kings season. The point is, yes Dean went for it again in the 2014-15 season and then after that he should have recognized the run was over. That was the time to get what he could for his best assets, not resign a soon to be 30-year old forward to an $80M, 8-year contract. I don't like the Kopitar signing because the Kings have not and will not be contenders over the first 4-5 years of the deal, and Kopitar's production will eventually tail off near the end of his deal.

People like to call posters like me Kopitar-haters, but what I really am is pro-Kings and them being contenders as much as possible.

 

[GoldenBearHockey]

Too much what have you done for me lately revisionist BS history here....holy mother of god....

Am I really to believe that right after 2014, that everyone that is now spewing this BS, didn't think they could repeat in 2015, and that they should have sold everyone? That's just garbage....there's only one or two teams in the HISTORY of sport, that have sold high DIRECTLY after winning a championship....to say that's what you wanted at that time is some BS revisionist crap to either make yourself look good or feel good ffs.

 

[LAKings88]

Many advocated buying out Richards. That was about it tho.

 

[lumbergh]

No Cups without a Willie on the team.

 

[LAKings88]

No Cups without a Willie on the team.

You need multiple willies to win a cup.

 

[tny760]

No Cups without a Willie on the team.

 

[Axl Rhoadz]

Yea, we drank the devils koolaid when we bought Deans spiel about loyalty and tattoos on the ass. He wasn’t wrong in principle but in practice his evaluations of individuals, aka Mike Richards and Marian Gaborik, were dead wrong and crippled what could have been a generational dynasty.

The trades and cap penalties were all just fallout from those two choices.

Oh my god, would you guys please shut the f*** up about Lombardi....geezus, quit whining already! You act like there’s a GM out there who’s never made a bad move. Yes, in hindsight they were bad trades, but it’s not like the guy wasn’t trying to win, LOL. You act as if his plan was to cripple the Kings....f***! He brought us TWO CUPS!! would you trade those for Sekera and Lucic moves?? lol

 

[GoldenBearHockey]

Oh my god, would you guys please shut the **** up about Lombardi....geezus, quit whining already! You act like there’s a GM out there who’s never made a bad move. Yes, in hindsight they were bad trades, but it’s not like the guy wasn’t trying to win, LOL. You act as if his plan was to cripple the Kings....****! He brought us TWO CUPS!! would you trade those for Sekera and Lucic moves?? lol

There come back is going to be....those were AFTER the cups, and while they are right....again...no one stops trying to win DIRECTLY after winning a championship ffs

 

[KingsHockey24]

Has this been the most exciting 24 hours of Kings since the season started?

Since the season started? Possibly.

But overall landing Kovalchuk had me the most excited.

Today's news was pretty meh for me. I'd rather have seen a player or two traded.

 

[Sol]

The common division I see in Kings fan it's either everyone is still acting like DL was perfect, or DL sucked.


DL was a really solid GM, he made good trades, and developed character, until the Kings won the second time and the game changed, he didn't adapt, offered ridiculous contracts and blew draft picks away to recapture glory.

I see some people quoting him like he's Lao Tzu.

 

[GoldenBearHockey]

The common division I see in Kings fan it's either everyone is still acting like DL was perfect, or DL sucked.


DL was a really solid GM, he made good trades, and developed character, until the Kings won the second time and the game changed, he didn't adapt, offered ridiculous contracts and blew draft picks away to recapture glory.

I see some people quoting him like he's Lao Tzu.

Only thing I disagree with is....the game didn't change. Speed and skill WERE ALWAYS there, always trying to get those players who had both, what really changed, was players making an impact while still on ELC. Lombardi essentially, capped himself out, yea, messy contracts (Gaborik comes to mind) were there, but there's no way LA wasn't going to sign, Quick, Kopitar, and Brown after the cup runs, anyone who says differently, plays too many video games.

 

[KINGS17]

If people took the time to read, I think they can see pretty much everyone here was for going for it again in 2014-15. It was after that season some people started seeing the writing on the wall.

 

[GoldenBearHockey]

If people took the time to read, I think they can see pretty much everyone here was for going for it again in 2014-15. It was after that season some people started seeing the writing on the wall.

I was actually in the middle of writing mine, when you had posted yours, yours just came up first...

 

[DoktorJeep]

Oh my god, would you guys please shut the **** up about Lombardi....geezus, quit whining already! You act like there’s a GM out there who’s never made a bad move. Yes, in hindsight they were bad trades, but it’s not like the guy wasn’t trying to win, LOL. You act as if his plan was to cripple the Kings....****! He brought us TWO CUPS!! would you trade those for Sekera and Lucic moves?? lol

It’s not a question of “try”, and I think his plan behind every decision was to win the cup. It just sucks it played out pretty much the worst possible ways.

 

[lumbergh]

I have to wonder if it's Marco Sturm who has an audition for the permanent job, not Willie Desjardins.

 

[KingPuckChoo]

I have to wonder if it's Marco Sturm who has an audition for the permanent job, not Willie Desjardins.

they seem pretty high on him

can't wait to see if our specialty teams improve

 

[SettlementRichie10]

I actually was supportive of going for it in both 14/15 and 15/16.

After they lost to the Sharks so easily that year, and it was clear Lucic couldn’t be re-signed, yeah, I firmly jumped on the rebuild train.

 

[GoldenBearHockey]

they seem pretty high on him

can't wait to see if our specialty teams improve

They said after that 1st PP goal, they were operating at a 30% rate etc

 

[Raccoon Jesus]

It's Christmas for me baby!!!

Players have gotten the following canned:

Marc Crawford
Terry Murray
Darryl Sutter
Dean Lombardi
John Stevens

You can cite Crosby and Ovechkin all day but this core hasn’t won anything in 4 years. They tuned out Sutter and wanted Stevens then when he called him out for lack of compete, they tuned him out.

At some point you got to start shipping players out.

Not a fan of Willie, but best of luck to him. Kopi, Brown, Quick and DD must not have mirrors in their houses, 3 coaches fired in 7 yrs under their watch. Stevens had his faults, but the players were /are more responsible. At what point does management see their might be bigger cracks in their core than they realized.

So I know the narrative here is the players are coach killers, but look around the league: Longest tenured coach is Q, and probably not for long--but he's been there for a decade now. Clear outlier. Cooper has been in TB since 2013--5 years. Maurice in WPG and Laviolette in NSH--4 years. everyone else is 3 years or sooner. Median tenure right now is 2 years. 1/3 of the league's coaches have been hired between the start of last year and now.

Coaches are hired to be fired and lets stop acting like this is abnormal.

The common division I see in Kings fan it's either everyone is still acting like DL was perfect, or DL sucked.


DL was a really solid GM, he made good trades, and developed character, until the Kings won the second time and the game changed, he didn't adapt, offered ridiculous contracts and blew draft picks away to recapture glory.

I see some people quoting him like he's Lao Tzu.

Let's also be fair and recognize some of these things aren't able to be managed around in a sense. You can't replace some of those players and we talked about it all along; it's easy to get a player 'better' than Stoll or Greene or Mitchell, but you can't 'replace' them if that makes sense. over the course of a couple of years, those are assets we lost for nothing--Stoll, Williams, Regehr, Greene, Voynov, Mitchell, even Richards--retired or moved on. Maybe he didn't adapt, but also maybe he couldn't, since those guys are products of a different era and neither that type of player nor era exists right now.

This is why I'm big on vision and identity and that was my big issue with Stevens (and right now until I see otherwise, Blake and Luc too).

 

[SettlementRichie10]

I also agree with Axl that everyone needs to shut the f*** up about Lombardi. He’s not our GM anymore. He tried to squeeze another Cup out of the core, as would 9 out of every 10 GMs.

People also live in this moneyball NHL GM mode fantasy where you can dump your core the moment they hit 30. It just doesn’t work that way.

We’ll never know what Lombardi wanted to sign Kopitar for. All we know is ownership forced him to cave on 8x10. Luc was drinking the 12-14 Koolaid more than anyone, including Lombardi. And he’s the jackass still in charge to whom we should direct our ire.

If the ship had potentially sailed by 15/16, it’s long gone by now. How that’s still Lombardi’s fault, who knows

 

[DryIslandBartender]

Dean Lombardi definitely made mistakes. I don't recall your stance on the Lucic deal at the time of the trade, but many here were applauding it. Pundits from around the league were saying the Lucic, Kopitar, Gaborik line was going to destroy other teams, but it didn't happen. I didn't particularly like the deal.

I was in favor of the move to get Sekera, but bad luck with his injury, and primarily very poor seasons from Kopitar, Brown, Richards, and Stoll doomed the 2014-15 Kings season. The point is, yes Dean went for it again in the 2014-15 season and then after that he should have recognized the run was over. That was the time to get what he could for his best assets, not resign a soon to be 30-year old forward to an $80M, 8-year contract. I don't like the Kopitar signing because the Kings have not and will not be contenders over the first 4-5 years of the deal, and Kopitar's production will eventually tail off near the end of his deal.

People like to call posters like me Kopitar-haters, but what I really am is pro-Kings and them being contenders as much as possible.

Sekera, Richards and even Lucic I was on board with. Bottom line is the Kings best years were under DL. He had a plan and idea of what Kings hockey will be. I don’t think the current management has a clue where to start or what kind of team they want. We’re just being fed standard cliches and STILL piggybacking off the 2012-2014 run. They don’t even negotiate hard for a contract, undercutting DL in the Kopitar deal and then give Doughty whatever he wants. It’s creating an entirely different culture than what DL had in mind here.

We’ve never experienced that kind of sustained success for 3-4 years. 2 cups and a WCF appearance. In my mind at that time. the best chance to win a cup was to continue getting those veteran guys. Even if it was at the expense of the future.

I certainly, and I don’t think DL foresaw the drug busts (Richards and Stoll) and a very serious domestic violence incident with Voynov. These are guys he had penciled in for years with the Kings. Stoll had a couple seasons left in him.

The only way we’re getting back to being a contending organization is hiring a knowledgeable hockey ops guy.

 

[GoldenBearHockey]

Sekera, Richards and even Lucic I was on board with. Bottom line is the Kings best years were under DL. He had a plan and idea of what Kings hockey will be. I don’t think the current management has a clue where to start or what kind of team they want. We’re just being fed standard cliches and STILL piggybacking off the 2012-2014 run. They don’t even negotiate hard for a contract, undercutting DL in the Kopitar deal and then give Doughty whatever he wants. It’s creating an entirely different culture than what DL had in mind here.

We’ve never experienced that kind of sustained success for 3-4 years. 2 cups and a WCF appearance. In my mind at that time. the best chance to win a cup was to continue getting those veteran guys. Even if it was at the expense of the future.

I certainly, and I don’t think DL foresaw the drug busts (Richards and Stoll) and a very serious domestic violence incident with Voynov. These are guys he had penciled in for years with the Kings. Stoll had a couple seasons left in him.

The only way we’re getting back to being a contending organization is hiring a knowledgeable hockey ops guy.

I can't tell if you are serious or not, Robitaille, 30 yearss + in the game, Blake, 30+ years in the game, if those aren't knowledgeable hockey ops guys, I don't know what is, now they might have a different vision, different ideas than you, but holy f***.....to they aren't knowledgeable about the game, about what it takes to play at that level, to succeed at that level, what characteristics to look out for, what can be taught, what can't be taught, that's just...self-absorbed hubris...

I get it, a lot of you guys don't like Blake for what he did as a player, or don't like Luc because of whatever...but holy f*** batman, talk about not giving guys a chance

 

[kingsfan28]

Lol can you imagine?? Don't coaches pick their own captains?

I suggested it before he returned from IR as the first wake up call to the team.

 

[DryIslandBartender]

It's Christmas for me baby!!!









So I know the narrative here is the players are coach killers, but look around the league: Longest tenured coach is Q, and probably not for long--but he's been there for a decade now. Clear outlier. Cooper has been in TB since 2013--5 years. Maurice in WPG and Laviolette in NSH--4 years. everyone else is 3 years or sooner. Median tenure right now is 2 years. 1/3 of the league's coaches have been hired between the start of last year and now.

Coaches are hired to be fired and lets stop acting this like is abnormal.


Let's also be fair and recognize some of these things aren't able to be managed around in a sense. You can't replace some of those players and we talked about it all along; it's easy to get a player 'better' than Stoll or Greene or Mitchell, but you can't 'replace' them if that makes sense. over the course of a couple of years, those are assets we lost for nothing--Stoll, Williams, Regehr, Greene, Voynov, Mitchell, even Richards--retired or moved on. Maybe he didn't adapt, but also maybe he couldn't, since those guys are products of a different era and neither that type of player nor era exists right now.

This is why I'm big on vision and identity and that was my big issue with Stevens (and right now until I see otherwise, Blake and Luc too).

That’s not the issue, the players wanted Stevens and he lasted a little over a season. We’re going to have 4 coaches in 3 seasons.

At what point do players become held accountable?

 

[GoldenBearHockey]

That’s not the issue, the players wanted Stevens and he lasted a little over a season. We’re going to have 4 coaches in 3 seasons.

At what point do players become held accountable?

Sutter, Stevens, Willie,

Not sure if I am counting correctly though....