that was probably the strongest LA team of the post-gretzky era. they rode the momentum of the detroit upset to an impressive game one victory against colorado before patrick roy, on his way to his third conn smythe, shut the door in all but one of the next six games.
even without blake, they had a pretty good d corps of castoffs from other teams that were all starting to come into their own, led by schneider, who was finally becoming a good two-way defenseman (plus the late season addition by subtraction of one aki berg). they had norstrom and miller in their primes as rock solid defensive guys, and schneider, jaroslav modry, philippe boucher, and a rookie visnovsky (playing mostly pp minutes) as puck movers. the weak link was the regrettable jere karalahti, who was really exposed in the playoffs.
offensively, they had two solid scoring lines, with palffy, deadmarsh, robitaille (who scored 37 goals in the regular season), glen murray, jozef stumpel, and smolinski. and their third line of laperriere, belanger, and emerson really stepped up in the playoffs to give the team three dangerous lines.
i remember thinking this LA team had nowhere to go but up, especially with boucher and modry breaking through offensively the next season. but the jason allison trade, while giving them one of the best lines in the league, also turned them into a one line team, especially since robitaille left for detroit and smolinski had lost a step. but potvin had a great season and they still made the playoffs.
after that, the entire top line ran into serious injury problems and potvin fell off and what had been a promising young team turned back into a doormat. but i rooted for this team pretty hard, and in a way the pre-lockout briere/drury buffalo team, packed with young talent on the verge of breaking through, reminded me a lot of those 2001 kings.
