LA Kings the most disastrously run franchise in the league

[Herregud]

Am I one of the few that sees the trade as a wash and not particularly disastrous for either side?

Kuemper is due a bounce back, the season before this disastrous one, he played well enough. Caps had provided him with absolutely nothing in front of him resembling the support he had before they acquired him. The injuries up and down the lineup didn't help.

PLD, as problematic as he can be, will still be magnitudes better than 90% of what the Caps iced last season.

 

[Ace Card Bedard]

At this point I'd much rather have Kuemper's contract on the books than PLD's.
The Kings did well to free themselves of PLD just before his NMC kicked in.

Caps are now stuck with him for years unless he waives.
For the 4th-5th time, I hope he turns it around, but is that even a realistic hope at this point?

 

[Herby]

Everyone bringing up Bergevin, just stop.

The disastrous decision that put the Kings down what is going to end up being a decade long black hole was made in the summer of 2021, when Bergevin was still the GM of the Canadiens. Had the Kings stayed the course of a rebuild through last summers draft they would have a young core of Byfield, Faber, Clarke, Anderson, Durzi, Vilardi as well as top 1-10 picks in 2022 and most importantly a 1-10 pick in 2023 which is going to end up being a loaded center draft. Instead they brought in middling non-needle moving band-aid veterans each of the last 3 summers, costing them Faber, Vilardi, Durzi and both those draft picks in the process.

Bergevin was also in Montreal when Blake went against the recommendations of his scouts and drafted Alex Turcotte #5 overall in 2019. Turcotte has the fewest points through five seasons of any top 5 pick in this century. That is 100% on Blake, it was a disaster his scouts were going to help him avoid, but the totally unbiased opinion of Blake's former teammate (and Turcotte's college coach) Tony Granato was to much for Blake to resist.

For people bringing up PLD, the Kings were apparently also interested in trading for him in 2021, again when Bergevin was still the GM of the Habs. So lets not pretend that this was boogeyman Bergevin getting into Blake's ear and making him do this trade.

Instead of being on the dawn of returning to contention with under-23 talent that could have rivaled anyone else in the league, the Kings are a middling aging team with no championship upside and a prospect pool that was largely abandoned to chase 1st round exits with players drafted 19 and 16 years ago, who should have been moved on from long ago.

 

[Ace Card Bedard]

*Bergevin ?

 

[PeE eL DuBoiS]

Knowing to cut the line on PLD is actually commendable. Far better than trying to ride a dead horse into the sunset, for the purpose of hoping to save face.

 

[Felidae]

It's unfortunate when all time greats of a franchise tarnish their legacy in the management role.

 

[Jared Dunn]

The PLD move yesterday is objectively a positive I'd say. Holding onto him would just be sunk cost fallacy. But incredible that Blake will keep his job, basically took a dump on the floor and is getting applauded for cleaning it up

 

[Bleedred]

Isn’t this gonna be the last year on Blake’s contract?

I heard about a year ago that he doesn’t want this job long term and that he’ll maybe only be the GM until this contract ends, because he wants to go surfing all day and not be involved in the day to day of running an NHL team.

 

[DJJones]

Kings did the rebuild pretty well. Kept their 1C and 1D, drafted well and transitioned to a legitimate team well ahead of schedule.

Bad trades happen. In todays game you have to take risks to gain a cap advantage. Sometimes they don't work out.

All in all, I think they'd be happy with how the last 5 years played out.

 

[Reality Czech]

They cut their losses. The cap space they freed up is valuable. Maybe it's better to ask, "what they hell are the Caps thinking?"

They've needed someone to fill the lazy, uninspired center role since Kuzy was traded.

 

[SEALBound]

When you look at recent activity, yes, it absolutely looks rough. I would obviously blame Blake for making the moves but when I sit back and really think about it, it's not like the moves were "bad" in and of themselves but the players haven't exactly done them any favors.

On paper, trade for PLD was a decent proposition. They wanted to bolster the center position with a 60pt center and they had young kids in the wings to fill gaps. While PLD certainly had his warts, it's not Blake's fault he was a dud on the ice for the majority of the season.

Similarly, they had what looked to be a very nice crop of young players - Turcotte, Lizotte, Kaliyev, Vilardi, Kempe, and they procured Grundstrom, Moore and Arvidsson. I mean, at the time, that's a nice collection of players to put on top of Kopitar and Doughty. But again, with the exception of Kempe and Moore, I wouldn't say any of them have realized their potential. Arvidsson probably so but injuries suck.

Sometimes you get lucky in the drafts and your players develop well and sometimes they don't. Now to be fair to Blake (just a tad), I thought Bill Zito made a mountain of errors by giving away solid players - Trochek, Marchment, Vatrano, Weeger, Tippett, Duclair...I thought the overall depth of the roster was taking a hit but low and behold, the players all mesh and they make b2b cup finals. I thought the Penguins were in a rough spot circa 2015. Low and behold, one major trade, and a couple crap for craps and they are b2b cup champions. So it's quite possible that when things seem bad, there's always the ability to bounce back.

 

[Ollie Weeks]

It's unfortunate when all time greats of a franchise tarnish their legacy in the management role.

They never won a damn thing here, and never will.

 

[McShogun99]

The Kings were on the path to being cup contenders after last season. All they had to do with keep the team intact and get a starting goalie. Instead they butcher their depth to trade for PLD and go after Talbot and Riddich

 

[TheDawnOfANewTage]

They just traded PLD for the decomposing corpse of Darcy Kuemper, a goalie way past his prime. Basically, they gave away PLD for (almost) free as Washington was more than happy to get out of that albatross contract, and this comes after shipping out Vilardi, Iafallo , Kupari and a 2nd for Dubois just a year ago, and then giving him a huge 8-year extension at $8.5M.

The issue here is that almost everyone on these boards could have told you when the trade was done just how much of a collosal disaster giving out a long-term deal to the always malcontent PLD was, but somehow Blake and the rest of the Kings front office didn't see it. Complete disaster.

They also extended Todd McLellan just a few months before finally firing him, another mega-puzzling move. You have to think that there is something seriously wrong behind the scenes for the Kings moves to look this bi-polar. Another disaster, and they should have parted ways with Todd long, long ago.

But worst yet, they just recently extended their management group! So basically Blake and co were allowed to pay a premium to make these disastrous move and then everyone is acting as if nothing happened. It looks like there is absolutely no accountability at the management level whatsoever.

Are the LA Kings the worst run franchise in the league?

Buffalo Sabres say hold my Genny Lite while I table smash this bitch. Self-inflicted wounds, let’s gooo!

 

[VaCaps Fan]

They would at least look good in the 1960s-1987 jerseys.

 

[Moose Head]

Bergevin effect

Imagine what he would have given up for PLD if he had remained Habs GM

 

[Gabrielor]

The Buffalo Sabres haven't made the playoffs in 13 years.

We have no equal at bad management right now.

 

[Dog]

Won 2 cups in 2011-12 + 2013-14 I seen a lot worse run teams.

 

[tfwnogf]

it was disastrous to sign pld in the first place, but to get rid of a turd like him you gotta pay a price. So at least they've stopped the bleeding.

 

[Fripp]

They just traded PLD for the decomposing corpse of Darcy Kuemper, a goalie way past his prime. Basically, they gave away PLD for (almost) free as Washington was more than happy to get out of that albatross contract, and this comes after shipping out Vilardi, Iafallo , Kupari and a 2nd for Dubois just a year ago, and then giving him a huge 8-year extension at $8.5M.

The issue here is that almost everyone on these boards could have told you when the trade was done just how much of a collosal disaster giving out a long-term deal to the always malcontent PLD was, but somehow Blake and the rest of the Kings front office didn't see it. Complete disaster.

They also extended Todd McLellan just a few months before finally firing him, another mega-puzzling move. You have to think that there is something seriously wrong behind the scenes for the Kings moves to look this bi-polar. Another disaster, and they should have parted ways with Todd long, long ago.

But worst yet, they just recently extended their management group! So basically Blake and co were allowed to pay a premium to make these disastrous move and then everyone is acting as if nothing happened. It looks like there is absolutely no accountability at the management level whatsoever.

Are the LA Kings the worst run franchise in the league?

They have no clear vision or direction, and Bluc has set fire to their pile of assets from the last decade with incompetent move after incompetent move. We're entering a dark period for this team - expect a long stretch of being a bottom feeder.

 

[WarriorofTime]

I think it’s a good idea to cut your losses and realize a mistake rather than double down. GMs rarely do it because they’ll be fired for the initial mistake in most cases.

 

[SmytheKing]

The Kings were on the path to being cup contenders after last season. All they had to do with keep the team intact and get a starting goalie. Instead they butcher their depth to trade for PLD and go after Talbot and Riddich

Comments like this remind me that most of us don't have the time to watch all the teams in the league and make calls on how good or bad other players are. The Kings were (and are) nowhere close to being on the path to cup contenders. They were a regular season team of smoke and mirrors that had no clear direction or team makeup. They weren't sniffing a cup.

 

[Saga of the Elk]

The last few years for the Kings have been a little rough, I guess. However, according to some internet research I recently did, they have won the Cup actually quite recently.

Meanwhile, Minnesota is such a hapless franchise that no one even stops to remember they exist. In 24 years, it has achieved one conference finals appearance. This season, with the best collection of talent the team has ever known ... it fails to make the playoffs. What's more disastrous than complete irrelevancy and mediocrity?

 

[HabzSauce]

This was a good trade for LA - it's funny that people are still trying to make this sound awful for LA just so they can dunk on them.

Of course they got rinsed when you factor in what they paid for PLD originally, but what's done is done..getting rid of that albatross contract for a goalie who has proven to be a solid goalie for most of his career, with only 3 years left at under 6M is a Win for LAK.

 

[Voight]

Sure their decisions haven't been great lately but they have more cups in the last 24 years than all but 6 franchises.