Speculation: Another year of this Bluc **** (The 2024-25 season thread)

[KingsHockey24]

Obviously I don't mind the trade at all but man ..

Brayden Schenn would've made an awesome LA King.

 

[Bandit]

Can we have contest? Come up with a single word that describes Fiala

Woof.

 

[Telos]

Eddie Garcia on Locked on Kings went to the Lunch with Luc season ticket holder event and gave some highlights about what was discussed:

Some highlights that got my attention:

• Said that Philip Anschutz has given pretty much a green light to sign, acquire, or spend on any player/superstar they bring up to him, and when asked if they were going to spend up to the new upcoming caps of $95.5M, $104M, and $113.5M he said: "we have to".
• They are expecting to have about $5M to play with at the trade deadline and are targeting a physical forward, pretty much a gritty 20+ goal scorer.
• This front office is leaning hard into data and analytics and are using something called "The Crown" that he assumed was a software/program. They've said this before, but I still find it interesting and am wondering if they are leaning too hard into the Moneyball aspect.
• The team is going back to 11/7 when Mikey Anderson returns.
• The team wants to keep Gavrikov and Anderson together and move Doughty to the 2nd pairing when Mikey returns.

A couple of ones I thought were just interesting:

• Luc is intentionally scheduling games at 5PM and earlier on Saturdays because some teams play those against us back-to-back against Anaheim and he wants a competitive advantage by giving them less rest. Apparently, Yzerman complained about this. The rest of our Saturday games are 5PM or earlier and all of them have a day of rest before them for the Kings.
• Also Luc said before the start of the 3rd period during Game 1 of the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals, Gretzky told the team in the locker room to check the curves of their sticks to make sure they didn't have an illegal curve. That's the first time I heard that story.

Anyway, you can check the rest out here:

 

[CarlSneep]

I feel like you can pretty clearly see the difference between “analytics moves” (goalies, Englund, Burroughs, Foegele) and “Luc moves” (PLD, Edmundson)

 

[tigermask48]

Full-time amateur scouts probably don't have a lot of time to commit to it. I'm sure there's digging on information through contacts and maybe some part-timers. And it's true you can't project too far out. But I think having one or two people full-time on the job would provide advantages. As for the roadmap...I was thinking if a team feels like maybe they will have to blow it up within the next 2-3 years and there's indications that maybe year 2 has two phenoms top of the draft class and a deep group, you could say that's the time to blow it up rather than a year later or the year earlier.

This already happens in a couple of ways depending on the geographical location.

For example I know for a fact the Kings had Tony Gasparini scouting the Midwest US heavily before he became the GM of Souix Falls a couple years ago.
I would see him at things like the Minnesota Select camps, or High School hockey tournaments here and there and then also at some of the college games I would be at.
So the Kings definitely do this already, I recall Tony once talking about seeing Thomas Vanek play as a 14 or 15 year old in Souix Falls.

The other way this happens is sort of a trickle down type of thing. An NHL scout will often have a bunch of contacts in an area they scout heavily. One of those contacts has a couple scouts watching 14-15 year olds while scouting for Junior level players. They find a guy they like and the NHL scout gets tipped off to maybe look into this kid when his draft comes around.

 

[ouendan1]

I don't post enough to understand how to quote in this forum, but building off of something Telos posted regarding Luc's comments, and yes this is going to be nothing more than me going blah blah blah.

I look at the Dodgers and Lakers and they make those league shaking moves. Obviously this is off the heels of the Doncic trade but the Dodgers signed Ohtani and basically every other major free agent they want. The Kings don't seem to have that same appeal or ability. Yes hard cap, yes top end players are rarely available via free agents or trades blah blah blah. But I see this organization as unwilling or unable to go out of their way to push for top 10 players. Maybe it's a management thing, maybe it's an ownership thing, I dunno I'm simply a fan but this is freakin Los Angeles. Players should WANT to come here.

...damn this forum has gotten me to post twice in a calendar year.

 

[Herby]

I don't post enough to understand how to quote in this forum, but building off of something Telos posted regarding Luc's comments, and yes this is going to be nothing more than me going blah blah blah.

I look at the Dodgers and Lakers and they make those league shaking moves. Obviously this is off the heels of the Doncic trade but the Dodgers signed Ohtani and basically every other major free agent they want. The Kings don't seem to have that same appeal or ability. Yes hard cap, yes top end players are rarely available via free agents or trades blah blah blah. But I see this organization as unwilling or unable to go out of their way to push for top 10 players. Maybe it's a management thing, maybe it's an ownership thing, I dunno I'm simply a fan but this is freakin Los Angeles. Players should WANT to come here.

...damn this forum has gotten me to post twice in a calendar year.

In fairness to Luc and Blake, they don't have the advantages that those teams have when it comes to making moves.

The Kings can't spend 2.5x the league average on their payroll to construct an all-star team, and the Avs ownership isn't going to force their GM to trade MacKinnon for Kempe and Clarke without offering him to anyone else in the league.

Just a different world, the NHL is more like the NFL, where you really have to do it through the draft. That is the knock on what BLuc did, not properly constructing a championship caliber roster through the draft, tough to big-game hunt in the NHL.

 

[Vote4Lubo]

Didn't have much faith in Hiller, thought he would be Todd 2.0(especially how they were playing in January) But he has good chemistry going and isn't afraid to shake up the lines. Congrats to Jim.

 

[funky]

Didn't have much faith in Hiller, thought he would be Todd 2.0(especially how they were playing in January) But he has good chemistry going and isn't afraid to shake up the lines. Congrats to Jim.

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I still am not sold on him.

He still continues to rely on veterans way too much.

Sometimes he onertinkers with the lines. He needs to realize that sometimes it’s OK to let a couple of the super skill players do their thing and not play like robots.

I think that his system is gonna be easily overcome in the playoffs when teams can concentrate on just how robotic and structured we are. We’re almost too predictable. It sounds funny, but I wish he’d let different lines play different ways. It would just show the other team different looks as well to try and defend against. We do this with our hockey team. We have a couple really big hard for checking lines that play a robotic dump and chase style. Then we have a line of fast smaller guys that just go out and treat havoc. Hard to match up against us and our different looks

Guys like Kopitar need the structure. They are slow and methodical. Very cerebral, slow twitch, looking for that right play, same mindset on the power play which is a detriment in my mind.

Guys like Byfield, Fiala, rely on skill, quick twitch, instincts, and speed. I think it would be almost better just to let them go out and do their thing. A guy like Turcotte on that line who hunts pucks at a high speed and has the quick hands to adopt two plays would be an awesome addition. Let those three skill guys out on a power-play to rip pucks back-and-forth, one time pucks, user speed to skate into lanes. There more attack attack attack.

The other thing I don’t like about his system is its wear and tear on the players. Giveng 100% plus effort night after night has to be over taxing on the bodies.

We can’t chase the leader else. We don’t have a chance to win.

I think he’s built a solid foundation, I just think a few little tweaks would really aid the system. I think it’s evident when you pair certain players together how well they perform.