From
The Athletic's Eric Duhatschek - part of a longer article answering readers' questions:
Is Kings GM Rob Blake nuts or a genius? — Scott V.
Genius. Though maybe the correct way of assessing Blake’s recent work as GM falls somewhere short of genius, but far from nuts. Last month, when we first did trade grades on the big Winnipeg-Los Angeles deal that saw Pierre-Luc Dubois go to L.A. for Gabe Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari and a second-round pick, I gave the Kings high marks for adding an impact player in exchange for replaceable pieces. But that was a minority view. Most people saw it the other way — as a complete win for Winnipeg, especially since the Jets needed to move on from Dubois. Time will tell how that plays out.
But what I’m discovering more and more is a far greater appetite than there once was — among readers, fans and even teams themselves — for the sort of complete makeover that Flyers GM Daniel Briere did to his team in June. Briere made some bold swings in the trade market, even if it meant taking on bad contracts in some deals and jettisoning players via buyouts in others. In short, he made his team a lot worse — and everybody seemed to love it! Briere’s moves mean Philadelphia is about to embark on a long and painful rebuild, similar to what Detroit has undergone under Steve Yzerman and what San Jose is trying under Mike Grier or Anaheim under Pat Verbeek.
All of which is very appealing in theory. Complete do-over. Out with the old and in with the new.
The problem is the successful execution can be so difficult to complete.
Which is where Blake’s pivot with the Kings comes in.
Between 2017 and 2020, the Kings were one of those same rebuild-through-the-draft teams, trying to restock the player pipeline after going all in to win Stanley Cups in 2012 and 2014 and compete for a few more after that.
In that four-year span, the Kings had 11 choices in the first two rounds — five first-rounders (Vilardi, Kupari, Alex Turcotte, Tobias Bjornfot and Quinton Byfield) and six second-rounders (Jaret Anderson-Dolan, Akil Thomas, Arthur Kaliyev, Samuel Fagemo, Helge Grans and Brock Faber).
Thus far, the only one who has made any kind of impact at all is Vilardi, and it took him until this past year to get there. Byfield remains a work in progress. The Kings have moved on from a lot of the others, most of whom don’t project as impact NHLers. But as a team, they’ve become competitive anyway. Why? Not because of their drafting or developing, but because they’ve gone out and either traded for or signed Dubois, Kevin Fiala, Phillip Danault, Viktor Arvidsson, Trevor Moore, Vladislav Gavrikov and others.
Really good, in-their-prime NHLers, in other words.
You really do need to ask yourself, what’s the better path?
In a perfect world, the preferred course of action is what Dallas managed in 2017, which was to draft three future stars in the first two rounds (Miro Heiskanen, Jake Oettinger and Jason Robertson) of the same draft. But that’s a team catching lightning in a bottle. It’s because it happens so infrequently that we’re always citing that one shining moment as an example of what could be done, with an unreal draft class.
The reality is a strict draft-and-develop strategy is more likely to head in the direction it did with L.A. — where the results have been very mixed.
You look at New York. The Rangers are still waiting to see what Alexis Lafrenière and Kappo Kaako are going to be. Edmonton’s moved on from Jesse Puljujarvi and Kailer Yamamoto already — who were two highly regarded prospects not that long ago. Drafting is an inexact science. If you put all your faith in that path alone, and you get the usual share of hits and misses, you can spin and sputter just as badly as the teams desperately trying to stay in their Stanley Cup windows a year or two longer than maybe they should have. That’s what you learn from a sober look back at draft history. Once you get past the handful of premium blue chippers, there are a lot of Lias Anderssons, Olli Juolevis and Alexander Nylanders lurking, even in the top 10 of the first round.
GMs often get criticized for being gun-shy about rebuilds, but all of them have studied draft outcomes. They see what happens when the hype and promise of draft day slowly dissolves and then the hard work of turning these young raw talents into productive difference-making NHLers begins. The results are often not very pretty. Me? I’d rather do what Blake did. Rather than keep hoping for development that may or may not be there, get in some established NHLers — still reasonably young in most cases — and try to win with them right now.
