Thinking back to my youth, the modern Kings are like the Houston Oilers, Cleveland Cavaliers, St. Louis Blues, Indiana Pacers and Washington Capitals. There every year, but never a threat to do anything.
I don't know if it's incompetent management thinking the team is close to contending or whether it's clueless fans (like one notable one on here) telling their ticket rep they'd rather lose in the 1st round than pick in the Top 5.
The article is spot on though, the Kings lack star power is glaring, and the league is an arms race, you can make the playoffs every year with solid depth throughout the roster, but without game-breakers you just can't win in the playoffs vs properly constructed teams with those types of players.
Between the 2017 and 2021 drafts, the Kings had a #2, #5, #7, #11, #18 and #22 picks. And the best offensive season they have to show for any of these picks is 23 goals by GV and 55 points by QB. These 6 picks combined have less points for the Kings than Ottawa's #3 pick in 2020 alone does. Make all the excuses you want, but there were guys available with these picks that are already established stars in the league. Like Walter Donovan in "The Last Crusade", Rob Blake chose poorly.
But those poor choices didn't need to be the end of it. This all goes back to the summer of 2021, and the ridiculous decisions made then, which set the wheels in motion for this disaster of a roster and a lack of high-end young pieces. You can't end a rebuild until you have two proven young stars on your roster. If that means picking Top 5 for 3-4 more years so be it. It's not like the players the Kings chose all suck, many of them could have easily have had secondary or depth roles to guys like Bedard or Fantilli etc. to who the Kings could have drafted had they kept the rebuild going through last summer.
If the Kings truly believed QB wouldn't hit his peak until 23-25 years old (as Emerson now retroactively claims), the plan should have been to keep drafting high in the draft, not to try and contend with the biggest top 3 project pick in NHL history (which Emerson is indirectly claiming QB is) with older players on the 17th fairway of their careers.