Ziggy Stardust
Master Debater
Hiller’s handling of the lines last night really brought back memories of Willie Desjardins. Who else misses top six forward Austin Wagner in the lineup?
Speculation: Another year of this Bluc **** (The 2024-25 season thread)
- Thread starter Lt Dan
- Start date
1000%. I have not been a fan of Hiller but will say I like that he puts four forwards out when LA is trailing. It makes sense.
FSL KINGS
Registered User
- May 10, 2021
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That's why Kempe was moved to LD?
Does Blake know he's allowed to make trades to improve the team?
AbsentMojo
F-ing get up and hunt! Cmon Todd!
This lineup seems more sensible: Edit: Im glad that Hiller wasnt stuck keeping Moore and Danault glued to each other. Fiala is such an odd player.. He makes talented players on his line worse and mid to scrub players better... so the 3rd line makes sense to me. Maybe w TJ comes back have him sit a few more to see how these new combos work out.
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I get the sentiment but your analysis is wrong, moving both Kopitar and Doughty would result in the Kings becoming a lottery team at best. The picks wouldn’t help without changing management and development, plus Rob would just handout big money deals to players we don’t really need.. The team had everything aligned to be very, very competitive but became short sighted and pissed away assets.
But say you can move Kopi and Drew, then you should also move Fiala, Danault, Kempe and Moore as they no longer fit the long term rebuild plans his team needs to go through… again!
If you want Byfield to grow then it’s aa easy as moving out PD and rolling Kopi, QB, Turc, Sammy down the middle.. you want assets? Phil and Vlad get you two 1sts and maybe you make a play for Necas, Tkachuk or Cozens
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bland
Registered User
- Jul 1, 2004
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I am sure it was more a case of not wanting to disrupt two lines that were working than anything. Frankly, Kopitar is having a very difficult time playing with anybody with pace nowadays. Lewis is far from ideal, but despite the nonsense that litters the GDTs, Lewis is actually playing well this year and in a one-off it isn't that bizarre.
Keep in mind that Kopitar is still being used as the matchup center. His defensive skill is about reading plays before they develop and being in the right place as opposed to making desperate lunges. He has always thrived with sensible, honest wingers that he can trust and predict and has had trouble with more offensively oriented risk takers.
There is this weird notion that fans sometimes cling to that you can "cover" for a poor defensive player by putting him with a responsible center. That might work further down the lineup, but your top matchup line needs to work as a unit without the kinds of enormous gaps that somebody like a Fiala leaves. Moore is quick, not necessarily fast, so hopefully this has a chance of working well.
Sol
Smile
- Jun 30, 2017
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Herby
How could Blake have known?
The Kings don't have the Jimmy's and Joe's to have the type of lineup to produce the results that management thinks they should (contender), there isn't a top-end 1C, top-end 1D, Byfield's play this season doesn't look like he's ready to be a 2C. So they have to just throw things into the blender more than a lot of teams do, especially with putting scoring depth all over the roster. Hiller has to coach based on feel and the hot-hand, because he doesn't have a lot of top-end plug and play guys. I have actually been pretty pleased with Hiller and the results he has gotten out of this team. But again, as we saw last year, playing this grind it out, zero margin for error 3-2 style is easier to play now, but it grinds you down as the season goes on.
In order to get any of those guys the Kings would have to include Clarke +, (especially for Tkachuk and Necas) and even then, the Kings have just gutted so much of their future with these bad trades and bad draft decisions that it's probably not realistic, they just don't have the combo of young players and picks to make it happen. Byfield's trade value if he were to be moved is significantly damaged due to Blake's mind-boggling decision to sign a player they claim is a long-term project to a contract that ends right as he hits what they say is his 1C prime. Nobody is going to give up a ton for a player who they only have team control over for 3-4 more years.
BTW, I flew into O'Hare yesterday, got into my car and listened to Chicago sports talk, the Chicago Bears are going through Hell right now, yet the day after suffering one of the most embarrassing losses in recent team history, the coach was on the phone to the ESPN radio affiliate answering extremely difficult questions from the media (before his cell signal crapped out lol). It again just made me realize just how easy Blake and Luc have it. Nobody in this organization has had to do anything like this, ever.
Could you imagine Hoven and Bernstein saying something like that to anyone in the Kings FO? It's funny, they say they don't do it because they'd risk losing access, but none of these other media members in other markets lose access for grilling members of management or the coaching staff when the results aren't there. Luc, Blake and their buddies have some of the easiest no-pressure jobs in all of professional sports, they really do. What looks like absentee ownership that doesn't care about results and a media that is terrified to put them on blast and instead wants to be buddy-buddy with them and call them by their nicknames.
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How much better would this team of been with Faber, Vilardi, Kupari, Iafallo and all those picks we traded… any other GM would have been shit canned by now
Bandit
Registered User
By now? Any other GM would have been shitcanned by then.
Herby
How could Blake have known?
All they had to do was nothing! That is what really really sucks about all of this.
Even with top 2 round picks Turcotte, JAD, Bjornfot, Kaliyev, Fagemo, Hughes and Kupari underwhelming or outright busting and even with the poor decision with their 1st in 2020, they would have been fine had they just continued the rebuild through 2023 or 2024.
Rolling Yahtzee with Faber and Laf outside of Round 1 makes up for a lot of those mistakes.
Clarke and Faber would be one of, if not the best young defenseman duo in the entire league. Even if they weren't playing together, you have one player with off-the-charts offensive ability and another one with off-the-charts defensive ability. This would have been LA's Weber/Suter for atleast the next decade.
Byfield settles in as a guy you can call a nice 2C who will feast against secondary checkers and defenders. You still regret the decision made that night, but it's not as catastrophic as it looks now. Because of the riches at D you can draft more forwards in 2022, 2023 and maybe even 2024 (depending on the speed of the rebuild).
You have Vilardi and Laf as your top 2 right-shot wings. Both have been among the best wingers in the NHL so far this season.
Kempe was still young enough where he would be in his prime when the rebuild ended.
The 2023 draft gives you your clearest path to obtaining the elusive alpha 1C that Blake had been looking for since he took over. Depending on lottery luck you add a Bedard, Carlsson, Fantilli, Smith, Michkov to all these other guys.
2022 was not as good a draft, but give the Kings another Top 8 pick (again lottery luck) but you are looking at adding either another potential Top 6 forward like Cooley, Gauthier or a complimentary defenseman.
Turcotte, Thomas, Lee and Helenius give you the makings of a gritty bottom six with some skill mixed in.
All of this was possible, this isn't some deep "what-if" where you move a bunch of pieces around in hypothetical trades, this is what it would have looked like had he just stayed the course until 2023. But instead we gutted almost all of this for PLD, Danault, Arvidsson, Fiala and Gavrikov, and were repaid with 6 total playoff wins in 3 seasons and one of the worst U-25 rosters in the league. And we are years away from even sniffing being serious contenders for a Stanley Cup.
Masterclss!
How could Blake have known?
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Surf Nutz
Hockey Remote Viewer With A Frozen Finger
The Kings don't acknowledge Coach or management extensions until there is a record win streak.
Raccoon Jesus
We were right there
Wouldn't be surprising
these guys like to buy at the top every time
Wish uncle phil treated his hockey ops like I'm more sure he does the stock market and other things. When it comes to the rest of his businesses, AEG buys NVIDIA at the end of 2022. When it comes to the Kings, he lets Blake buy Bear Stearns in 2007 and sell it in 2008.
johnjm22
Pseudo Intellectual
- Aug 2, 2005
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This is why I've said that if Bluc gets fired I'd be okay with keeping the current scouting/drafting department.
Yanetti & Co have done pretty well.
Man reading the hopeful PLD comments from Caps fans on the main board gives me mixed feelings. On one hand I feel bad for them knowing it sounds all too familiar and I know what’s coming. On the other hand, misery loves company and they have a new nickname for him “Duber”, so it’s funny knowing what’s coming. Does that make sense or did I rip the pen too hard. Ehhh
FSL KINGS
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Don't understand why teams keep playing him at center. Put PL on wing with a speedy center & park him in front of the net.
Don't worry about it, they have until 2031 to regret their decision. They'll come around.
i realize these guys are scapegoats and get hired to be fired, but i think hiller is getting a bum rap due to having little to work with- a bunch of mid level fwds which include a comedy act scoring winger along with a sulking one with an aging out center. a d corp that with one exception (he cant wait to bail to get get paid) they resurrected from a landfill.
to avoid any more vitriol i think hiller is doing his best with what he's got personell wise. he is a quantum improvement from the last lad. the problem is obvious and it aint the coach.
to avoid any more vitriol i think hiller is doing his best with what he's got personell wise. he is a quantum improvement from the last lad. the problem is obvious and it aint the coach.
Herby
How could Blake have known?
I still have grave concerns about how they evaluate top of the board picks, especially with the Kings very likely to be entering a tear down rebuild that is going to result in a few years of picking well inside the Top 10. Their results in the later rounds (Faber, Laf, Anderson) have been elite and warrant plenty of praise, but every 1st round pick other than Clarke you can find players taken almost immediately after who have just been multiple levels better than who the Kings took.
Now again, how much of this is on Blake? I know the GM usually has more say in 1st round picks than later in the draft, and we know that Blake overrode the 2019 pick and took Turcotte, who ended up being a poor choice, but the scouts wanted Zegras, who looking at who was available wasn't the right pick either.
In 2020 they clearly chose the wrong player, and it's not even close. Was this Blake overriding the scouts again or did Yanetti and his team think Byfield was a better prospect than Stutzle?
If the Kings do tear it down next summer, or when Kopitar retires, they have to hit big on a few of these top picks for a rebuild to be successful, not all of them have to be homeruns, our last rebuild was a success despite the Hickey and Bernier picks, but it has to be better than what they delivered to us with this rebuild.
It is fair to mention that the development choices with many of these disappointing picks were extremely poor, I think everyone knows that, but I also don't think Turcotte playing two years of college or Byfield never seeing AHL ice would have made the type of difference where they go from disappointing picks to homerun picks, it didn't make THAT big of a difference. But it is fair to mention, since the best picks these guys have made, have been on guys who did most of their development in the NCAA as opposed to on the Reign.
Raccoon Jesus
We were right there
I'd love to lay it on Blake because my understanding is that GMs have more say in 1st and 2nd rounders
But this goes well back to DL as well
So it's likely that whatever is working from 3rd round on just isn't going for them in the 1st 2
AbsentMojo
F-ing get up and hunt! Cmon Todd!
The pros: He did a good job adjusting lines.. first he noticed Turcotte was adding a lot of value and moved him to 3C but had to move Q to 1W.. then he got Q back to center and moved Turc to 1st line.. ie he found a way to get more time for Turcotte without totally hurting Q center development. His move of Lewis to 1st line w JT out was sus, but thats because he didnt want to disrupt lines 2 and 3 right away is my thinking. Now I see in practice he is splitting up 12 and 24 to not have to play Lewis on Kopis. So all his line juggling to me has made a lot of sense.
The: cons: I still think QB should be PP1 for the benefit of the PP and his confidence. PP1 is struggling I think Q would help w puck retrievals, screens and passing. I hated that he subbed in Lewis for Turcotte in the Hawks game and promptly gave up the tying goal. He still has the smell of Koala with the his vet preference.
johnjm22
Pseudo Intellectual
- Aug 2, 2005
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Looking at some other team's draft history makes me appreciate our own.
Nashville hasn't drafted a 20 goal scorer since 2014. (Fiala and Arvidsson):
Nashville hasn't drafted a 20 goal scorer since 2014. (Fiala and Arvidsson):
Fripp
Registered User
Is it just me, or has Danault looked unengaged all season? He was downright lazy in the Calgary game.
Herby
How could Blake have known?
He's almost 32, and with the type of game he has played for most of his career his body is probably closer to that of a 35-36 year old. There are a lot of miles on those tires. People talking about the Kings flipping him for a 1st at the deadline if we are out of it are being very very optimistic. His contract this season and next is a negative.
It should make everyone appreciate what a freak of nature Kopitar is.
And they have a very similar philosophy with young players that the Kings have.
I hope our next GM models our franchise after teams like Colorado, Tampa and Dallas and not the Nashville F'n Predators.
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