Brown / Kopitar / Gaborik
Toffoli / Carter / Pearson
King / Shore / Lewis
Clifford / Weal / Nolan
Muzzin / Doughty
Sekera / Voynov
Martinez / Greene
Quick
Jones
What's the problem? We aren't going to resign Williams, Stoll is gone, Andreoff gets sent down, Weal gets his chance. What's the problem?
That line up, if you assume Sekera gets $5.5 million comes to a cap hit of $63.215 million, and you still need to resign Toffoli, Shore, Weal, and Jones. That's the issue. If you assume Toffoli gets $3 million, which is not unreasonable, that leaves under $3 million for Shore, Weal and Jones, and if they just sign their qualifiers they will be pretty much exactly at $69 million.
Which then leaves you no room for injury recalls. not to mention when was the last time any NHL team went the full season carrying just 20 skaters? Normally the Kings carry 14 forwards and seven D and if you assume those extra three bodies each get paid about $700,000 each, which is likely going low, that's another $2.1 million to factor in.
So, using your line up, if we assume Sekera gets $5.5 million and Toffoli gets $3 million, and then Weal, Shore and Jones only take their qualifiers, and then the Kings go cheap on the healthy stratch/depth guys they will be carrying, they'd still be about $2 million over the cap.
And then we get to look at Richards who you didn't mention in here, so I assume you think someone is taking him off our hands. If that doesn't happen and we choose to go to a buy out, we'd be looking at a cap hit of I think $1.4 million next year for that.
So we'd be about $3.5 million give or take over the cap using that line up quite possibly and realistically. That's the problem.
Ask Sutter that. He is notoriously reliant on veteran experience and "grit".
Also, it was not long ago that Robyn Regehr was a healthy scratch in the 2013-14 playoffs. Conveniently forgetting that?
I love the spin. You must be a writer. Regehr was hurt and when he got healthy the team was doing well so Sutter didn't alter the lines. He did the same thing when Schultz went in the previous year and some guys got healthy. He didn't change anything until the team started to collapse against Chicago. he rolled with the hot team, not to mention IIRC Regehr aftr the playoffs said he wasn't ever back to 100%, he was just able to play with pain. Hardly a healthy scratch.
He played a lot because he felt the Kings had no other options.
And the fact he was playing well also.
He did not trust McNabb enough yet, not because of ability but because of familiarity. He did the same thing to Martinez when he first came over as coach, likewise with Muzzin. Regehr was playing 20 minutes a night not because of contribution but because Sutter felt he had no other options.
And each time the Kings D ended up being one of if not the best in the league. He went with the option that produced results. You are infurring what Sutter was doing, you are a journalist, back it up. Show me where Sutter said or even implied he played Regehr because he had no other options. It's all your opinion, nothing more, and as I said, the end result, regardless of your stats, show that the Kings routinely were among the league leaders with GAA and did so routinely with Regehr logging 20 minutes a night in situations where there is a higher risk of giving up a goal, like on the penalty kill.
Then why do guys like Barret Jackman, Anton Stralman, or Nic Hjlamarsson have good possession stats while playing equally as difficult if not more difficult minutes than Regehr? Possession stats are not catered to one group or another.
You can hand pick examples that buck the trend any time. Stralman btw is also far more of an offensive defenseman than any of Jackman, Hjalmarsson or Regehr combined. The guy had 39 points this year. He should have better possession stats, his game is far different than Regehr's.
Again, you are attributing and evaluating TEAM DEFENSIVE NUMBERS to one player. Saying he is a member of the 4th best defensive team is like saying Andrew Desjardins was part of the best offense in hockey, or that Dustin Tokarski was part of the best goals against goaltending tandem in the league.
No, I'm saying a guy that was third in ice time and basically tied for tops in PK time should get far more credit for the overall team success than you are giving him. If he was so bad while playing so many minutes, how did the team do so well defensively? His sheering 'awful' play should have cost the team more over a 67 game run.
Btw, once again, terrible examples. Desjardins was on Chicago for all of 13 games this season and Tokarski is a backup. Why not use examples of guys getting top six/top 4/or starter minutes?
Regehr wasn't a "huge factor" as you put it. He was probably, at best, a 5-6 defenseman on this team this season that was forced into playing 20 minutes a night for various reasons. The Kings did suffer because of it. Not all because of him obviously, that's ridiculous. But forcing him to play those minutes because of injury/suspension/unfamiliarity with/of other players is part of why the Kings were not as effective possessing the puck, breaking out of the zone, or suppressing shots this year.
How did the Kings suffer?
Not to mention, don't all teams suffer through injuries, etc? Regehr played by your accounting roughly five minutes a game more than he should have and we didn't fall apart. We did far better than other teams in fact. Having a 5-6 D-man in your top four 4 for roughly 60-65 games should kill most teams. It didn't kill us. Our offense killed us and that's on the team as a whole, namely forwards like Richards and Brown. LA's defense, including Regehr, had us worthly of home ice in the first round. We are golfing because of the offense.
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