Speculation: Vincent Le Cavalier bought out..

[Whiskeypete]

Dean offered the same contract to Brad, Richards picked NY because he felt they were closer to a cup win. Don't thank Dean for that, thank Brad.

Dean offered a crazy contract to Kovalchuk too, NJ just offered an even crazier one to keep him.

while we have some insight on what was said and offered to both of them we will never know everything that is said over that conference table. as someone mentioned in this thread or another, upper management wants the "star power".

DL seems to have his plan and has stuck to it thankfully. as shrewd as he is it wouldn't surprise me to find out he did as directed (offer contracts) to Richards and Kovy, but knew he was going to be outbid.

now consider this as a possibility. do you think that Dean possibly was playing a poker bluff? drive up other team's cap situation by offering contracts to these RFA's, but get outbid for a player's service. in time it results in less teams being able to offer contracts. i've said that Dean plays chess, while many play checkers.

 

[Puck U]

DL seems to have his plan and has stuck to it thankfully. as shrewd as he is it wouldn't surprise me to find out he did as directed (offer contracts) to Richards and Kovy, but knew he was going to be outbid.

now consider this as a possibility. do you think that Dean possibly was playing a poker bluff? drive up other team's cap situation by offering contracts to these RFA's, but get outbid for a player's service. in time it results in less teams being able to offer contracts. i've said that Dean plays chess, while many play checkers.

REALLY ? IMO you're giving Dean WAAAAAAAAAAAY too much credit for how things worked out.

He WANTED Hossa, wanted Chara, remember also Dean WANTED Luongo and was going to trade Frolov to get him if a contract extension for Luo was in place, do you think we win the Cup with Luongo in place of Quick ? Dean was tempted to want Kovalchuk, he wanted Brad Richards and rolled out the biggest dog and pony show to try and sway him to sign with us ... we got lucky it meant more to Brad to play with former coach Trot's again.
Dean's smart no doubt, but come on man, he's not some super human brilliant GM that plays chess while every other GM plays checkers ... don't forget a BIG CHUNK of people around here wanted and/or thought your Mr. Chess was going to get canned in 2012 until he fired Andy Murray, and got lucky that Daryl Sutter said yes to coming back to coaching and we went on that incredible hot streak to Win our First CUP. Don't forget your Mr. Chess was the same guy who hired Marc Crawford as his first Coach, and signed Dan Cloutier to a two-year contract extension before he even played 1 game as an LA King. This is the same Lombardi that wasted first round draft picks on Thomas Hickey, Colten Teubert ... seems Dean wasn't even playing checkers then, he was playing GO FISH.

Yeah overall Dean has done his job and helped bring a CUP and the Stability of a perennial playoff team to us ... but he's far from being the BEST GM in the NHL.

 

[The Tikkanen]

REALLY ? IMO you're giving Dean WAAAAAAAAAAAY too much credit for how things worked out.

He WANTED Hossa, wanted Chara, remember also Dean WANTED Luongo and was going to trade Frolov to get him if a contract extension for Luo was in place, do you think we win the Cup with Luongo in place of Quick ? Dean was tempted to want Kovalchuk, he wanted Brad Richards and rolled out the biggest dog and pony show to try and sway him to sign with us ... we got lucky it meant more to Brad to play with former coach Trot's again.
Dean's smart no doubt, but come on man, he's not some super human brilliant GM that plays chess while every other GM plays checkers ... don't forget a BIG CHUNK of people around here wanted and/or thought your Mr. Chess was going to get canned in 2012 until he fired Andy Murray, and got lucky that Daryl Sutter said yes to coming back to coaching and we went on that incredible hot streak to Win our First CUP. Don't forget your Mr. Chess was the same guy who hired Marc Crawford as his first Coach, and signed Dan Cloutier to a two-year contract extension before he even played 1 game as an LA King. This is the same Lombardi that wasted first round draft picks on Thomas Hickey, Colten Teubert ... seems Dean wasn't even playing checkers then, he was playing GO FISH.

Yeah overall Dean has done his job and helped bring a CUP and the Stability of a perennial playoff team to us ... but he's far from being the BEST GM in the NHL.

Losing out on the Kovalchuk sweepstakes was probably Lombardi's best move as GM.

 

[Telos]

Name a GM as #1 and you could probably make a comparable list of mistakes. The key to Dean is he has a limit that he won't cross with anybody. None of those additions would have been that bad. We laugh at Luongo but he has played in the finals and has had some decent numbers for a while. You don't need an elite goaltender to win the Stanley Cup. Any one of those players would have been good additions to the team had they signed reasonable contracts. Even Lou went nuts, gave the contract, and it cost his team dearly.

 

[Ron*]

I would guess he will be a Hab next year
Unless he is a Quebec Coyote

Coyotes in Quebec make about as much sense as Grizzlies in Memphis, Hornets in New Orleans, and especially Jazz in Utah.

 

[Reclamation Project]

Luongo is an elite goaltender. He deserves to be traded to get out the circus known as Vancouver.

 

[Ron*]

I blame fantasy leagues for threads such as this.

Lecavalier's best years are behind him. Well behind him. Even so, he will command well in excess of $5 million per year, something the Kings can not even get close to thinking about unless they want to let go of six of our restricted and unrestricted free agents from the core of the 2012 Stanley Cup championship team.

Given that we are flush with centers, why would anyone even give this a second's thought? The Kings cannot hoard the best players in the league thanks to that pesky little thing knows as the "salary cap."

Let some other team dive on their own sword for this guy. sarcasm/ The Sharks seem interested...after all, they definitely need more veteran presence on that team, and are not interested in rebuilding. /sarcasm

(And no, this stupid emoticon doesn't properly convey sarcasm. It conveys a 4-year-old girl doing a curtsy.)

 

[kingsfan]

REALLY ? IMO you're giving Dean WAAAAAAAAAAAY too much credit for how things worked out.

He WANTED Hossa, wanted Chara, remember also Dean WANTED Luongo and was going to trade Frolov to get him if a contract extension for Luo was in place, do you think we win the Cup with Luongo in place of Quick ? Dean was tempted to want Kovalchuk, he wanted Brad Richards and rolled out the biggest dog and pony show to try and sway him to sign with us ... we got lucky it meant more to Brad to play with former coach Trot's again.
Dean's smart no doubt, but come on man, he's not some super human brilliant GM that plays chess while every other GM plays checkers ... don't forget a BIG CHUNK of people around here wanted and/or thought your Mr. Chess was going to get canned in 2012 until he fired Andy Murray, and got lucky that Daryl Sutter said yes to coming back to coaching and we went on that incredible hot streak to Win our First CUP. Don't forget your Mr. Chess was the same guy who hired Marc Crawford as his first Coach, and signed Dan Cloutier to a two-year contract extension before he even played 1 game as an LA King. This is the same Lombardi that wasted first round draft picks on Thomas Hickey, Colten Teubert ... seems Dean wasn't even playing checkers then, he was playing GO FISH.

Yeah overall Dean has done his job and helped bring a CUP and the Stability of a perennial playoff team to us ... but he's far from being the BEST GM in the NHL.

Really think you are capable of better posts than this Puck U.

A) Name a GM who wouldn't want Chara, Hossa, Luongo, etc. when they were available. All 30 GM's would have wanted him.

B) At least our GM was willing to try for them, unlike some other GM's. There's no harm, and little cost, in trying.

C) We didn't get them because they cost to much. Just because a guy got a bad contract, like Kovalchuk, doesn't mean DL is a bad GM because he was also interested in him. That makes no sense.

D) Frolov for Luongo would have been a very wise deal. To assume that DL would have given Luongo the same contract extension as Vancouver did isn't well thought out. DL has handed out some very wise contracts. Our worst contract is likely Stoll's, which says something. DL doesn't hand out bad contract extensions very often.

E) Would we have won the cup with Luongo? Who knows. The guy came one win away from winning a cup of his own in 2011, so it's hard to say he'd have no hope at all of winning one with us in 2012.

F) Got lucky Sutter wanted to come back to coach? Sutter was hired days after TM was fired and the two have a very lengthy history as a GM/coach duo. It's as lucky as any other coach signing with any other team. It's not like DL lured cotty Bowman out of retirement.

G) Name any GM who hasn't had a list of mistakes. Name who you think is the number one GM in the elague and let's see if we can pick out several mistakes for him as well.

H) Btw, name any other GM in the 46 year history of the LA Kings that has lead the team to back-to-back conference championship series'. This year showed last year was anything but some lucky run. We faced a lot more adversity this year and still made it back to the western conference finals.

 

[etherialone]

Coyotes in Quebec make about as much sense as Grizzlies in Memphis, Hornets in New Orleans, and especially Jazz in Utah.

You forgot the Lakers in Los Angeles.


The team the Coyotes makes a ton of sense being moved to Quebec but if they go there the team will be once again named the Nordique. While I hate the idea of the dirt dogs being the franchise that brings hockey back to QC I would be more than happy to have a team there again.

The league needs to Nordique.