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Speculation: 2019-20 News/Rumors,Roster thread Post Deadline

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From LeBrun's latest on The Athletic:

“Let’s get something straight here, whenever a team has won, there are some guys that don’t get appreciated,” Lombardi said. “You have to give a lot of credit to [former Kings GM] Dave Taylor; I started out with three darn good players in [Dustin] Brown, [Anze] Kopitar and [Jonathan] Quick. Let’s not ever forget what he did. And let’s not forget [former coach] Terry Murray, too. He stabilized this franchise and gave us credibility. There are some unsung heroes here that need to be appreciated.’’
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SettlementRichie10 said:
I’ve always thought that if the Kings just jumped from Crawford to Sutter they would have never won anything. Murray set the foundation for the Kings’ defensive “protect home plate” identity, which Sutter then refined into a relentless forechecking monster.
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Yep. You knew it was over for Terry Murray when Willie Mitchell of all people mentioned to the press that players were basically told to "stay in their lanes" in terms of offensive creativity.
 
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SettlementRichie10 said:
I’ve always thought that if the Kings just jumped from Crawford to Sutter they would have never won anything. Murray set the foundation for the Kings’ defensive “protect home plate” identity, which Sutter then refined into a relentless forechecking monster.
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Agreed. Murray was the right guy for the next stage of the teams development and as you say Sutter did the rest...
 
The only problem with Terry Murray was that he was here 1.5 years too long.

The core had learned everything they were going to from Murray by the end of the Vancouver series loss. It was a case of wheels spinning in home plate mud until Sutter decided he was ready to coach again.
 
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redcard said:
Murray's fate may have been different had Kopitar not broken his leg in 2011. The sharks won 3 OT games that series, Kopitar may have been enough to flip that result and having a series win under his tenure might have bought Terry a little more time in 2012.
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Can never know, but that 2011-12 team quit on Murray in camp.
 
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johnjm22 said:
They never "quit" on Murray. Things weren't working out, but it wasn't for lack of effort.
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It’s actually an interesting thought experiment. Up until December 1st, the Kings were playing pretty well, going 13-8-4. Unfortunately, that night, Sean Bergenheim concussed Mike Richards with a blind side headshot and Mike misses three weeks. The Kings lose their next five games in a row, getting outscored 14-6, and Terry Murray gets fired. They hire Sutter, Richards comes back from injury, they trade for Carter, the rest is history.

But the Kings were actually playing pretty well under Murray. Before the Richards injury, they had another 5-game losing streak, two of which were overtime losses and one of which was a regulation one-goal loss. If any of those go the other way, and Richards doesn’t get hurt, you’re looking at a 15-6-4 Kings team with two healthy first-line centers. They actually had only a marginally better goals scored per game with Sutter than with Murray - 2.48 vs 2.16. The real difference maker was actually Carter - when he joined the team in February, the Kings averaged more than three goals per game. In fact, if we only count the games before the Carter trade, the Kings were actually scoring fewer goals under Sutter (2.04 goals per game) than under Murray.

Anyway, not really sure what I’m rambling about any more. Went down a rabbit hole there.
 
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kilowatt said:
It’s actually an interesting thought experiment. Up until December 1st, the Kings were playing pretty well, going 13-8-4. Unfortunately, that night, Sean Bergenheim concussed Mike Richards with a blind side headshot and Mike misses three weeks. The Kings lose their next five games in a row, getting outscored 14-6, and Terry Murray gets fired. They hire Sutter, Richards comes back from injury, they trade for Carter, the rest is history.

But the Kings were actually playing pretty well under Murray. Before the Richards injury, they had another 5-game losing streak, two of which were overtime losses and one of which was a regulation one-goal loss. If any of those go the other way, and Richards doesn’t get hurt, you’re looking at a 15-6-4 Kings team with two healthy first-line centers. They actually had only a marginally better goals scored per game with Sutter than with Murray - 2.48 vs 2.16. The real difference maker was actually Carter - when he joined the team in February, the Kings averaged more than three goals per game. In fact, if we only count the games before the Carter trade, the Kings were actually scoring fewer goals under Sutter (2.04 goals per game) than under Murray.

Anyway, not really sure what I’m rambling about any more. Went down a rabbit hole there.
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ImpressionableSpiritedFulmar-size_restricted.gif
 
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kilowatt said:
It’s actually an interesting thought experiment. Up until December 1st, the Kings were playing pretty well, going 13-8-4. Unfortunately, that night, Sean Bergenheim concussed Mike Richards with a blind side headshot and Mike misses three weeks. The Kings lose their next five games in a row, getting outscored 14-6, and Terry Murray gets fired. They hire Sutter, Richards comes back from injury, they trade for Carter, the rest is history.

But the Kings were actually playing pretty well under Murray. Before the Richards injury, they had another 5-game losing streak, two of which were overtime losses and one of which was a regulation one-goal loss. If any of those go the other way, and Richards doesn’t get hurt, you’re looking at a 15-6-4 Kings team with two healthy first-line centers. They actually had only a marginally better goals scored per game with Sutter than with Murray - 2.48 vs 2.16. The real difference maker was actually Carter - when he joined the team in February, the Kings averaged more than three goals per game. In fact, if we only count the games before the Carter trade, the Kings were actually scoring fewer goals under Sutter (2.04 goals per game) than under Murray.

Anyway, not really sure what I’m rambling about any more. Went down a rabbit hole there.
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Yes, I think what I was partially alluding to is that you can't necessarily tell whether a team is playing hard for a coach based on wins and losses.

I think people forget that the forward group on that 2012 Kings team initially wasn't really all that great. Hunter and Moreau were in the lineup for god sake.

Say what you will about Smyth, but he was a 20 goal scorer the year prior with some finishing ability. He was gone. Stoll's offensive game had declined significantly. Handzus was gone. Losing Simmonds was a bigger loss than people realize. Penner was playing like crap. Gagne was pretty much done at this point. The acquisition of Richards couldn't make up for all these issues in the forward group.

Adding Carter, Penner waking up, and having King, Fraser and Nolan find their niche in the bottom 6 really balanced out the forward lines, but this wasn't until late in the season.
 
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johnjm22 said:
Yes, I think what I was partially alluding to is that you can't necessarily tell whether a team is playing hard for a coach based on wins and losses.

I think people forget that the forward group on that 2012 Kings team initially wasn't really all that great. Hunter and Moreau were in the lineup for god sake.

Say what you will about Smyth, but he was a 20 goal scorer the year prior with some finishing ability. He was gone. Stoll's offensive game had declined significantly. Handzus was gone. Losing Simmonds was a bigger loss than people realize. Penner was playing like crap. Gagne was pretty much done at this point. The acquisition of Richards couldn't make up for all these issues in the forward group.

Adding Carter, Penner waking up, and having King, Fraser and Nolan find their niche in the bottom 6 really balanced out the forward lines, but this wasn't until late in the season.
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The starting line up for opening night in 2011-12 looked like this:

Gagne-Kopitar-Williams
Richardson-Richards-Brown
Parse-Stoll-Hunter
Clifford-Lewis-Moreau

Mitchell-Doughty
Scuderi-Johnson
Martinez-Greene

Quick
Bernier

Scouting the Rangers - LA Kings Insider
 
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kilowatt said:
The starting line up for opening night in 2011-12 looked like this:

Gagne-Kopitar-Williams
Richardson-Richards-Brown
Parse-Stoll-Hunter
Clifford-Lewis-Moreau

Mitchell-Doughty
Scuderi-Johnson
Martinez-Greene

Quick
Bernier

Scouting the Rangers - LA Kings Insider
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And as a followup, here is what the Kings looked like in game six of the Stanley Cup Finals:

Brown-Kopitar-Williams
Penner-Richards-Carter
King-Stoll-Lewis
Gagne-Fraser-Nolan

Scuderi-Doughty
Mitchell-Voynov
Martinez-Greene

Quick
Bernier
 
Last edited:
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Just as a thought experiment, I’ve been thinking about what the Kings might look like in 2020-21 for real.

Iafallo - Kopitar - Brown
Frk - Vilardi - Kempe
Grundstrom - Carter - Moore
Wagner - Lizotte - Luff

xxx - Doughty
Anderson - Roy
MacDermid - Walker

Quick
Petersen

That leaves a lot of good players down in Ontario:

Turcotte, Kaliyev, JAD, Thomas, Fagemo, Madden, Dudas, Kupari, Bjornfot, Clague, Durzi, Hults.

Add to that anyone we draft (including possibly Stutzle and any of the second rounders), and sheesh, what a depth chart we have.
 
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kilowatt said:
And as a followup, here is what the Kings looked like in game six of the Stanley Cup Finals:

Brown-Kopitar-Williams
Penner-Richards-Carter
King-Stoll-Lewis
Gagne-Fraser-Nolan

Scuderi-Doughty
Mitchell-Voynov
Martinez-Greene

Quick
Bernier
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Caught the game where Penner's goal vs the Coyotes put the Kings into the SCF on NHL Network last month and watching him, remembering what a good fit he was on that line and in the playoffs.
Good Ole' Pancakes....he was also a good interview, had a great sense of humor.
 
kilowatt said:
Just as a thought experiment, I’ve been thinking about what the Kings might look like in 2020-21 for real.

Iafallo - Kopitar - Brown
Frk - Vilardi - Kempe
Grundstrom - Carter - Moore
Wagner - Lizotte - Luff

xxx - Doughty
Anderson - Roy
MacDermid - Walker

Quick
Petersen

That leaves a lot of good players down in Ontario:

Turcotte, Kaliyev, JAD, Thomas, Fagemo, Madden, Dudas, Kupari, Bjornfot, Clague, Durzi, Hults.

Add to that anyone we draft (including possibly Stutzle and any of the second rounders), and sheesh, what a depth chart we have.
Click to expand...


Iafallo - Kopitar - Brown
Frk - Vilardi - Kempe
Grundstrom - Carter - Moore... Grundy has proven nothing and honestly didn’t look NHL ready.. Moore is depth and likely replaces Luff
Wagner - Lizotte - Luff... Wagner is on the bubble in a big way, Luff is AHL fodder


xxx - Doughty
Anderson - Roy
MacDermid - Walker

Quick
Petersen

Iafallo-Kopitar-Brown
Carter-Vilardi-Frk
Kempe-Lizotte-VET
Wagner-Amadio-Moore

this is what seems more likely.. the D is about right, though I see us adding a Vet.. the goalie tandem is what we expect.
 
kings11 said:
Iafallo - Kopitar - Brown
Frk - Vilardi - Kempe
Grundstrom - Carter - Moore... Grundy has proven nothing and honestly didn’t look NHL ready.. Moore is depth and likely replaces Luff
Wagner - Lizotte - Luff... Wagner is on the bubble in a big way, Luff is AHL fodder


xxx - Doughty
Anderson - Roy
MacDermid - Walker

Quick
Petersen

Iafallo-Kopitar-Brown
Carter-Vilardi-Frk
Kempe-Lizotte-VET
Wagner-Amadio-Moore

this is what seems more likely.. the D is about right, though I see us adding a Vet.. the goalie tandem is what we expect.
Click to expand...

Grundstrom would require waivers next season. He’ll be on the roster. Luff I mostly agree, but we’ll see what happens.
 
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