When Dean Lombardi took over, LA has scoring woes and the team's search for a first line, game breaking scorer, maybe two of them even, has been quite ironic in this sense. In so many of the players we looked for, we came in second in the race.
With Marian Hossa, he gave LA a gentle answer that LA and Chicago looked to have a bright future but Chicago was closer to the Cup, which made sense. So no hard feelings there.
First the Kings acquired Ryan Smyth who appeared to be perfect playing on the first line with Anze Kopitar, jumpstarting the latter's offense. After a while, the Kings fans and organization accepted Smyth as a leader on that team despite aging badly and slowing down tremendously. Suddenly in the 2011 off season, right before LA's first Cup run, he demanded to be traded and LA reluctantly did. There was a huge snafu about the health player coming back in Colin Fraser. In the end, Smyth was sitting at home, watching LA win the Cup while his team was in the draft lottery and Colin Fraser was a wonderful 4th line center for LA that season on a team that rolls four lines. And Smyth's massive cap hit, signed years earlier before the cap era was in full effect, opened up enough space for LA to acquire Jeff Carter while Smyth tried to keep playing as a massively overpaid 4th line winger.
The Kings tried for Ilya Kovalchuk, who dragged them around and spurned them. Instead they got Jeff Carter. Kovalchuk goes to New Jersey who LA beats in the Cup final that next year, Carter scores some big goals including the game 2 OT goal and now is a rising star and a core player in LA while Kovalchuk is in the KHL.
After acquiring Carter, LA failed to also acquire Rick Nash in a package with Carter from Columbus. LA rumored was not on Nash's list of acceptable teams. He instead got dealt to the Rangers. When on the Rangers, that made Gaborik expendable and he was traded to Columbus. Then in this year's finals, Nash appeared to be snakebit the whole series including that shot late in game 5 on the open net that was crazily deflected by the shaft of Slava Voynov. LA beats New York and wins the Cup on home ice again due to Nash's inability to finish.
Also, LA attempted to woo Brad Richards after they acquired Jeff Carter since they couldn't get Nash. In similar fashion as Kovalchuk, B. Richards chose the New York Rangers. He also was total trash against LA in the finals and got to suffer the same defeat. (No shame to the Rangers team though, they as a team were real good. ) So after failing to acquire Nash, then Richards who both went to the Rangers, trade short list and UFA choice respectively, LA acquires the "broken down" and doubly-rejected (by NYR and CBJ) Marian Gaborik for basically a song and dance. And he proceeds to lead the playoffs in goal scoring by A LOT...number 2 is Jeff Carter..you can't make this stuff up, folks.
