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An open letter to Dan Beckerman and AEG

Lt Dan

Lt Dan

F*** your ice cream!
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Sep 13, 2018
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When Lombardi was fired you famously said

“This was an extremely difficult decision and was made with an enormous amount of consideration for what we have accomplished in our past. But the present and future of our organization is the highest priority,” said Dan Beckerman, president and CEO of AEG, the parent company of the Kings. “Words cannot express our gratitude and appreciation for what Dean and Darryl have accomplished for the Kings franchise. They built this team and helped lead us to two Stanley Cup championships and will forever be remembered as all-time greats in Kings history.
“But with that level of accomplishment comes high expectations and we have not met those expectations for the last three seasons. With the core players we have in place, we should be contending each year for the Stanley Cup. Our failure to meet these goals has led us to this change.”
Click to expand...

By the standard bolded above,
The Robitaille and Blake era has an abject failure. They squandered what was at one time the best prospect pipeline in the league. They hired their friends and most are doing a far below average job. Our prospect development , especially for forwards, is well below league average. But they thought were right there" last offseason as each playoff series loss to Edmonton was progressively worse. Lombardi started with a far worse team and won a cup in his sixth season, went to the conference finals the next season, and won another cup the year after that. Blake's teams can't even get out of the first round.

The organization reverted to the same old pre-Lombardi Kings. The organization forgot every lesson that Lombardi taught it about character and there was no better example of that than the Dubois trade. They ignored every red flag and then were surprised when what everyone else knew was going to happen, happened. And we are right back in to tbe black hole.

Let's compare the Rob Blake era to Vegas

The Kings
1746198097782.png

24-25 Lost in first round

Vegas
1746198178367.png

1746198212565.png

24-25 Won in first round

Same tenure-
Rob 0 playff series win
Vegas- 10 series wins and a cup

Vegas is winning and Rob turned us in to the Sharks




One can best define the current management with the words arrogance and nepotism.
It's time to clean house from Robitaille down. It's time to end the old boys club.
Our amateur scouting and goalie coaches should be the only ones spared. Yeah Luc was one of our favorite players , but Luc the executive is one of the worst in tean history. Bring in some fresh blood and an outsider. Look what happened last time the Kings did it.
 
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Dan Beckerman doesn’t give one shit about trying to win a cup. He is the epitome of a caretaker. Tim Lieweke is a builder, so is Dean Lombardi. Beckerman, Robitaille, and Blake are a bunch of hacks who never accomplished anything worthwhile for this hockey team.

It’s pathetic so many fans are just fine with mediocrity. It was the same shit during the Dave Taylor years.
 
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I'm sure I'll have a longer winded letter/evaluation later, but it all boils down to one simple message, if I were talking to the Kings ownership.

Your longtime fans view the current 'experience' as a money grab, not a team that has any serious interest in competing. They feel talked down to, taken advantage of, and frustrated, with no end in sight, as they're not good enough to beat their contemporaries, and about to get caught from behind by younger teams who are acting on a vision. The team coverage and fan 'access' has taken a complete dive over the years; we've lost events, reporters, even simple GM/staff media sessions. The result is 30+ year fans like myself feeling more disconnected than ever from a franchise I we grew up with and have no real intention of walking away from, but feel like we have no choice. There is no publicly articulated vision, there is no honest introspection and evaluation ("we were right there"), and there is no connection to the fanbase.

If this current front office were to be held to the lofty standards the previous ones were, there would be no way this can continue. The previous folks were ousted after ONE playoff failure; the current have had carte blanche to retool/rebuild TWICE with nothing to show for it; they've been allowed to lose to the same opponent four times in row DESPITE building specifically to beat them; they've joined the ranks of teams with no playoff success in years, now ranking only ahead of Buffalo and Detroit, going twice to three times as long as most teams without a playoff series victory. They were handed a championship infrastructure, several future hall-of-famers, several 'do overs' on trades and competing vs. retooling, unlimited AEG financial and other resources, and basically hands-off ownership, yet accomplishing nothing.

The culture needs changing. Plain and simple. Too much comfort with complacency.
 
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KingsHockey24 said:
Roster wise there is no way to improve this team in the off-season.

We will be worse next year.
Click to expand...
Ah, but why do we care about just being better next season, instead of building the foundation of a Stanley Cup contender? The initial Lombardi years were fun for me as a fan because the man had a vision, and he executed on plans to reach the goal of winning a Stanley Cup. It wasn't flawless, but he never waivered in his basic principles.
 
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Lt Dan said:
NotHelen is not pleased

heleneelliott.substack.com

Different year, same failure for the Kings

Where do they go after their fourth straight opening-round playoff loss to Edmonton? To Cabo? To the golf course? It's time for unflinching self-evaluation. And some retrenching on the ice and off.
heleneelliott.substack.com heleneelliott.substack.com
Click to expand...

Yeah, since she was retired from the Times, she's been using both barrels a lot more.
 
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I have been tough on Luc Robitaille ever since he took over when Lombardi was fired.

Let me preface this by saying Luc was a great player. I was extremely impressed by the leadership he showed when he took over as Captain when Gretzky was injured. In fact, I believe the leadership he showed during that time and the success the team was having without Gretzky was such a blow to Wayne's ego that I think he advocated for Luc being traded to Pittsburgh.

Robitaille was great with the fans as well after he retired. He should have stayed in that role. He is not the right person to lead this organization from a strategic perspective and Blake is not the right man to do it from a tactical perspective. Neither of them have a clue on what it takes to win a Stanley Cup. Sure, they were on cup winning teams after they left the Kings, but they were not the heart and soul of those teams. They were the added ingredients that put the finishing touches those teams, not their foundation.

Counting on Blake and Robitaille to do anything different is a waste of the fans time. If AEG can't see that, then sell the damn team.
 
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LA Kings are the new Indianapolis Colts. Mediocre, make the first round of the playoffs; bow out unceremoniously. A good raw prospect who everyone hoped would be a lot better.
 
..
Lt Dan said:
When Lombardi was fired you famously said



By the standard bolded above,
The Robitaille and Blake era has an abject failure. They squandered what was at one time the best prospect pipeline in the league. They hired their friends and most are doing a far below average job. Our prospect development , especially for forwards, is well below league average. But they thought were right there" last offseason as each playoff series loss to Edmonton was progressively worse. Lombardi started with a far worse team and won a cup in his sixth season, went to the conference finals the next season, and won another cup the year after that. Blake's teams can't even get out of the first round.

The organization reverted to the same old pre-Lombardi Kings. The organization forgot every lesson that Lombardi taught it about character and there was no better example of that than the Dubois trade. They ignored every red flag and then were surprised when what everyone else knew was going to happen, happened. And we are right back in to tbe black hole.

Let's compare the Rob Blake era to Vegas

The Kings
View attachment 1028118
24-25 Lost in first round

Vegas
View attachment 1028121
View attachment 1028122
24-25 Won in first round

Same tenure-
Rob 0 playff series win
Vegas- 10 series wins and a cup

Vegas is winning and Rob turned us in to the Sharks




One can define the management with three words....arrogance and nepotism.
It's time to clean house from Robitaille down. It's time to end the old boys club.
Our amateur scouting and goalie coaches should be the only ones spared. Yeah Luc was one of our favorite players , but Luc the executive is one of the worst in tean history. Bring in some fresh blood and an outsider. Look what happened last time the Kings did it.
Click to expand...
Nice job finding that quote and pushing it back in their face. Not much you can say after that. If they dont clean house, the spin on this situation will be fascinating. I cant imagine what they wil say.

"One can define the management with three words....arrogance and nepotism." that sentence needs amending. When you burn someone you cant give. them. any ammo to fire back.
 
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Lt Dan said:
NotHelen is not pleased

heleneelliott.substack.com

Different year, same failure for the Kings

Where do they go after their fourth straight opening-round playoff loss to Edmonton? To Cabo? To the golf course? It's time for unflinching self-evaluation. And some retrenching on the ice and off.
heleneelliott.substack.com heleneelliott.substack.com
Click to expand...

If the organization can’t develop players that can be trusted in playoff games and in crucial situations, what are Blake and his staff doing?
Click to expand...

Eight years (and four coaches) after Rob Blake became the Kings’ general manager, after they had deluded themselves into believing they could still win with the core of their 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cup championship teams
Click to expand...
This was a failure from top to bottom. It must be judged that way for anything to change for the better. They can’t proceed on the premise that they were a deflection away in one game, a post away in another, a minute away from winning in yet another. They didn’t win. They lost in the first round again. That can’t continue.
Click to expand...
While Kopitar and Doughty struggled, it’s only fair to note that Blake and the development system haven’t supplied potential replacements for either of them, leaving the team to rely on them too much. They were exceptional players at their peak, no question, but the Kings haven’t come up with anyone who has any semblance of their skills and can move into similarly big, team-leading roles
Click to expand...
All of these are completely fair and valid critiques of what once again went wrong this season.

I wonder how many of these things are mentioned on a certain other media members end of season playoff recap podcast?

Happy to see Helene is still writing about the Kings, although I assume the people in charge probably view people like her and Rosen the same way the Soviets viewed Solzhenitsyn
 
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