The 2014-15 year.

[Raccoon Jesus]

Possible, I certainly can't claim to be an insider so I can't discredit your post. That said, seeing as Sutter was a DL hire and DL was his number one supporter and didn't have any ties to management prior to being hired, I'd find it odd ownership suddenly valued him ahead of the GM so much they'd overrule the same GM that hired him in the first place. Not saying your wrong, just a very bizarre turn of events if so.



If no one saw it coming then that probably speaks volumes to why this team went tits up so fast after the cup run. Cup windows are generally 3-5 years and 2014-2015 was the fourth season of that window. There should have been a long look at if this team was a contender still or not and they went all in with a trade for Lucic. You can give a pass for trying to run it back that year if you want but when that year they loaded up again with trades forLecavalier, Schenn, Verteeg, etc. and then got smoked in five games by SJ in round one that should have been when they tossed in the towel and started rebuilding. It should have been obvious how the league was switching towards a much faster product and LA instead kept squandering assets on Iginla, Bishop, etc. the next year too.

I can understand not giving up on a cup run after 2014-2015 but to say nobody saw it coming following a season when they didn't even make the playoffs doesn't make sense to me.

If you're talking about 'when they didn't even make the playoffs' its' because they had the exact same record they had to win a cup in 2012, just had a near-historic bar for entry to the playoffs after a season in which literally everything went wrong. Nobody saw it coming because it took a literal historic season from the conference and the perfect storm of shit for the Kings to miss at the very end...so you still have a team that won 2 Cups in 4 years that literally everyone was still terrified of. LITERALLY no one breaks it down after 2015. After 2016? yeah that's way more debateable.

 

[KingsFan7824]

If no one saw it coming then that probably speaks volumes to why this team went tits up so fast after the cup run. Cup windows are generally 3-5 years and 2014-2015 was the fourth season of that window. There should have been a long look at if this team was a contender still or not and they went all in with a trade for Lucic. You can give a pass for trying to run it back that year if you want but when that year they loaded up again with trades forLecavalier, Schenn, Verteeg, etc. and then got smoked in five games by SJ in round one that should have been when they tossed in the towel and started rebuilding. It should have been obvious how the league was switching towards a much faster product and LA instead kept squandering assets on Iginla, Bishop, etc. the next year too.

I can understand not giving up on a cup run after 2014-2015 but to say nobody saw it coming following a season when they didn't even make the playoffs doesn't make sense to me.

Throw in what towel? By the time they got smoked by SJ, Kopitar wasn't going anywhere. Quick was old with a long contract, as was Carter. Brown was a shell who wasn't even taken by Vegas. Doughty was like 26. Nobody is getting rid of a 26 year old Doughty.

This is pro hockey, involving millions of dollars, and jobs on the line. Rebuilding is rarely a spur of the moment thing. Rarely done just because it should be. Rebuilding is what happens when all other options fail. Making the playoffs and going out in 5 quick games is not the kind of failing that starts a rebuild. Not being one of the 5 true contenders in the league does not start rebuild.

I'm not saying fans can't choose to not spend their hard earned money on a team that isn't a true contender. However, most teams will not set out to tank because they can't win the Cup. Most teams will cling to any hope of being competitive on a nightly basis. They will hold onto their star players to, yes, potentially help sell tickets. Crazy that people want money. I know sports aren't supposed to be a business, but most owners want people to show up. Even if a team has no realistic chance of going deep in the playoffs.

 

[kingsboy11]

God that year was so frustrating. The fact that they got to 95 points despite all the shit that went down that season is pretty impressive in itself, but it was the beginning of the end. I thought that was a good time to take a step back and reassess, but Lombardi instead double downed and we all know what happened after that.

 

[respD]

All came down to a horrific OT/SO record. Missed the playoffs by a point. For all of the issues that season, they still should have made the playoffs.

The final stretch of that season was just such a dud. They did the big deal for Sekera but he didn't move the needle and then was injured. They ended with four in-division games where they went 1-2-1 to finish ninth in the conference, two points behind Calgary. For their part Calgary went 3-1 in their last four including a 3-1 regulation win against the Kings that I believe closed out the Kings chances. Ugh.

 

[LAKings88]

The final stretch of that season was just such a dud. They did the big deal for Sekera but he didn't move the needle and then was injured. They ended with four in-division games where they went 1-2-1 to finish ninth in the conference, two points behind Calgary. For their part Calgary went 3-1 in their last four including a 3-1 regulation win against the Kings that I believe closed out the Kings chances. Ugh.

That stretch was so brutal to watch.

 

[GameNight]

Tidbits from 2016:

Tidbit 1: Franchise record in wins (48)
Tidbit 2: Doughty wins the Norris
Tidbit 3: Kopitar wins his first Selke
Tidbit 4: Lucic scored 55 points. Outside of Kopitar, no one has scored that many points since 17-18. Even Kempe is NOT on pace to match it this season.

and the window closed after 14-15??? No, 2016. But really, next to no one has been paying attention since 14-15.

 

[LAKings88]

Tidbits from 2016:

Tidbit 1: Franchise record in wins (48)
Tidbit 2: Doughty wins the Norris
Tidbit 3: Kopitar wins his first Selke
Tidbit 4: Lucic scored 55 points. Outside of Kopitar, no one has scored that many points since 17-18. Even Kempe is NOT on pace to match it this season.

and the window closed after 14-15??? No, 2016. But really, next to no one has been paying attention since 14-15.

Vinny L gave them a boost but they fell flat in the playoffs. Curse of Martin Jones.

 

[kingsfan]

Throw in what towel? By the time they got smoked by SJ, Kopitar wasn't going anywhere. Quick was old with a long contract, as was Carter. Brown was a shell who wasn't even taken by Vegas. Doughty was like 26. Nobody is getting rid of a 26 year old Doughty.

This is pro hockey, involving millions of dollars, and jobs on the line. Rebuilding is rarely a spur of the moment thing. Rarely done just because it should be. Rebuilding is what happens when all other options fail. Making the playoffs and going out in 5 quick games is not the kind of failing that starts a rebuild. Not being one of the 5 true contenders in the league does not start rebuild.

I'm not saying fans can't choose to not spend their hard earned money on a team that isn't a true contender. However, most teams will not set out to tank because they can't win the Cup. Most teams will cling to any hope of being competitive on a nightly basis. They will hold onto their star players to, yes, potentially help sell tickets. Crazy that people want money. I know sports aren't supposed to be a business, but most owners want people to show up. Even if a team has no realistic chance of going deep in the playoffs.

Throwing in the towel doesn't involve moving any of those players. Clearly, we still have all of them but Carter and he was only moved last deadline, but we've also underwent a rebuild with them.

Throwing in the towel can simply be stopping throwing assets at something that's not working, which we instead kept doing until the cupboard was almost bare. We missed in 2015, got our asses handed to us in 2016 by our rival, all with a core that was at or north of 30 outside of Muzzin, Toffoli, Pearson, Doughty, A-Mart and Kopitar (and A-Mart was 29) and very limited picks and prospects left to do more trades. Two years, one playoff win and we kept shoveling assets in the following year to boot. You don't have to fire sale to throw in the towel, you can simply stop cutting your own wrist.

 

[kingsfan]

Tidbits from 2016:

Tidbit 1: Franchise record in wins (48)
Tidbit 2: Doughty wins the Norris
Tidbit 3: Kopitar wins his first Selke
Tidbit 4: Lucic scored 55 points. Outside of Kopitar, no one has scored that many points since 17-18. Even Kempe is NOT on pace to match it this season.

and the window closed after 14-15??? No, 2016. But really, next to no one has been paying attention since 14-15.

And Lucic isn't part of the equation after that so what he did doesn't matter when determining your future plans. He signed in Edmonton that off-season.

 

[KingsHockey24]

Was that the year we signed Teddy Purcell in hopes he'd be a top six scoring winger for us.

 

[Herby]

There are a lot of reasons why the Kings could have fallen off that year.

1. A ton of games the previous 3 seasons, especially the 2014 playoffs. The Kings played 26 games that spring including 6 OT games (which they went 5-1, to add a bit to the good fortune bit).

2. The bringing the band back thing rarely works in sports and it didn't in this case. This was where we started to see the end of a meritocracy in LA and decisions were made in the summer of 2014 and especially the summer of 2015 that still have negative effects on the roster construction today. Richards was the worst player on the ice for many nights that season and had absolutely zero business being retained by the Kings. Despite the popularity of the player in the room (no one disputes that) to have no consequence for terrible play on the ice and presumably poor decisions off of it just sent the wrong message. Dean probably thought it would send a message that management is loyal and backs the players but IMO it sent a much different one to that group. The buyout Richards would have sent the message that no matter how well the team as a whole does if you don't pull your weight you are gone. That is how Bill Belichick operates, unfortunately Dean Lombardi didn't. The Kings were also at this point accumulating long-term smaller cap-hit contracts (Greene, Richards, Carter, Brown, Gaborik), another failed post cup strategy that is still hurting us today.

3. The blue line. The Voynov loss was obviously big. Slava was in his stone prime and provided a skillset on the blueline that the Kings have still to this day not been able to replace (Durzi looks great though). They probably should have let Greene walk and signed Mitchell for 2 years, Mitchell was probably worth the 2 points in the standings over Greene that would have gotten the Kings in. Greene was clearly declining and his skating was becoming a huge liability, even in the slower NHL of 7-8 years ago, giving him the 4 years was just foolish.

4. They ended up being thin on the wing again. When Richards collapsed the season before it meant Carter had to play center. In an ideal world when everyone was healthy and productive that was ok (see 2014 playoffs). But 2015 saw Brown fall off a cliff, and after being a star in the 2014 playoffs Williams returned to a 40 point player, Pearson got injured. If Brown or Williams are 50 or 60 point players and Pearson stays healthy they probably don't miss. But I don't see a long run in that team, mainly because of point 1.

What happened this season doesn't really bother me, what is annoying is that it should have lead to a realization that they maybe needed to reset a bit and bring in a couple of nice young assets through the draft to keep Dean's plan of being a decade long contender a reality. But instead they ended up trading their first in 2014 and disastrously in 2015.

 

[YP44]

Was at the game in Calgary where it ended. Richards played his best game of the year that game. The Saddledome was so loud.
Sucked.