What went wrong with the 90s rebuild

[Soapdodger]

With our current rebuild underway I was thinking about the time when I started following the Kings back in the 90s. After the McNall era ended we had to rebuild and there were tons of players with a seemingly bright future who never panned out or were traded before they were properly developed.
I am from Germany and there was absolutely no coverage of the NHL here and it was long before you could find everything online.
So could you please give me your opinions why guys like Storr, Berg, Rosa, Yachmenev or Jokinene failed in LA?

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[RossLonsberryFan]

Kings didn’t actually have a reputation for developing young talent back in those days. Before Jerry Buss bought the team from JKC, they traded away all their 1st round picks (and many 2nd rounders too). Jerry Buss spent more money on scouting and affiliation with Phoenix of the IHL, but the Lakers took up most of his attention before he sold the Kings to McNall. The first thing McNall did was trade for Gretzky and used 3 1st round picks to do do.

 

[DoktorJeep]

Sam “the disaster” McMaster

 

[Axl Rhoadz]

What went wrong is that there was never an actual 'rebuild'. They never stripped it down to the bolts like Lombardi did.

 

[YP44]

Deadmarsh-Allison-Palffy could not stay healthy. LA set man games lost record one year, and then beat it the next.

Not saying that team would have won a cup, but you cannot get a chance with your top guys always being out.

 

[bland]

Poor infrastructure.

The team was run on the cheap. Scouting was bare bones and training facilities were sub par. There was no defined identity in place, so the players brought in and drafted were a hodge podge of parts without a plan.

 

[KingsFan7824]

What went wrong is that there was never an actual 'rebuild'. They never stripped it down to the bolts like Lombardi did.

If 96-97 ain't bolts, then neither was anything DL did.

A multi-year plan? No, they didn't have that. Made the Palffy trade way too early. Or, the other way. They got Palffy, and then stopped.

 

[All The Kings Men]

Poor infrastructure.

The team was run on the cheap. Scouting was bare bones and training facilities were sub par. There was no defined identity in place, so the players brought in and drafted were a hodge podge of parts without a plan.

Deadmarsh-Allison-Palffy could not stay healthy. LA set man games lost record one year, and then beat it the next.

Not saying that team would have won a cup, but you cannot get a chance with your top guys always being out.

Depends when you think the "90s Rebuild" began. I would argue that what Bland is talking about is what preceded the "90s rebuild"

Yachmenev, Storr, Berg and Rose were all drafter prior to AEG purchasing the Kings

OCT 95 - AEG buys Kings

Players traded away during the 95-96 season
Wayne Gretzky
Daryl Sydor
Jari Kurri
Marty McSorely

I would argue that the "'90s Rebuild" started with the purchase of the LA Kings and was successful. The team took Colorado to 7 games in back to back seasons (00-01, 01-02) before injuries decimated the 2002-03 and 2003-04 seasons. Then 2004-05 was lost to the lockout and 2005-06 was more injuries ending with Taylor & Murray being fired.

 

[All The Kings Men]

If 96-97 ain't bolts, then neither was anything DL did.

A multi-year plan? No, they didn't have that. Made the Palffy trade way too early. Or, the other way. They got Palffy, and then stopped.

Deadmarsh, Allison, Potvin all acquired after Palffy

 

[Johnny Utah]

Jeff Shevalier couldn't cut it.

 

[Brodeur]

The 90's featured some of the worst draft pools, so it was a bad time to try to rebuild with draft picks. The Soviet Union collapsing in 1991 set their hockey program back, presumably Czechoslovakia had its own issues as well. I've read that Sweden lost a bunch of top athletes to soccer around the same time. Even Canada wasn't producing at the rate that it does nowadays.

Berg and Jokinen were arguably rushed in, then Jokinen became the necessary trade chip to get the Palffy trade approved by the league. The team pivoted from rebuild fairly quickly once they wanted a more competitive team to coincide with Staples Center opening.

 

[Lt Dan]

There were about 5 problems

Ownership was the biggest problem.

The team never stuck to it's rebuild. I remember Tim LieWeekly on Jim Rome's local show over and over talking about how Aki Berg was gonna win the Norris and how Olli J was going to be a King for life Like Dave Taylor. The Kings were gonna build from within, not sign high priced free agents, and not going to trade youth and draft picks

The 97-98 team surprised everyone, Rob Blake had a season for the ages and finished 2nd in the division and made the playoffs in own year for the Pacific. They rightfully got swept in the playoffs. And immediately the build from within mentally left the building. Steve Duschene was signed as a UFA Doug Bodger was brought in. The season was a disaster. Blake got suspended and hurt. Both starting goalies were hurt early on and missed enough games to kill the season.

The Staples Center opened the next season and ownership wanted a star and a playoff team and traded for Palffy and Smoke. Giving up Olli J , the player that they were previously going to build the team around.


The other problems were a joke of scouting department, no minor league team, no real player development to speak of , and no understanding of how to build a pipeline.

I still mostly blame Liweekly tho. It is no secret that he meddled in everything. He just needed to keep his hands off and STFU with the media

 

[BigKing]

Depends when you think the "90s Rebuild" began. I would argue that what Bland is talking about is what preceded the "90s rebuild"

Yachmenev, Storr, Berg and Rose were all drafter prior to AEG purchasing the Kings

OCT 95 - AEG buys Kings

Players traded away during the 95-96 season
Wayne Gretzky
Daryl Sydor
Jari Kurri
Marty McSorely

I would argue that the "'90s Rebuild" started with the purchase of the LA Kings and was successful. The team took Colorado to 7 games in back to back seasons (00-01, 01-02) before injuries decimated the 2002-03 and 2003-04 seasons. Then 2004-05 was lost to the lockout and 2005-06 was more injuries ending with Taylor & Murray being fired.

But it was all trades or signings that were why those teams "did well".

The playoff roster of the 2001 team that beat Detroit had the following Kings draft picks:

Luc (kind of doesn't count since he'd been on two different teams by then and was 34)
Belanger
Karalahti
Lilja (played one game...25 year old rookie)
Lubo (24 year old rookie...played eight playoff games)

That's all she wrote. So I guess the issue with the "rebuild" not working is that Berg and Storr were 3OA and 7OA picks that busted. No 1st round pick in '96 and the two highest picks at 30OA and 37OA (Green and Cisar) were mostly nothings. Jokinen was looking like a bust was flipped for Palffy. Zultek was a huge miss at 15OA in '97 and Barney at 29OA unfortunately had the back problems. They got nothing out of the '98 draft except for flipping Biron in the Palffy deal. No 1st round pick in '99 with Parros in Round 8 being the best pick.

At this point, the Kings have pretty much no prospects heading in to the 2000-01 season. Like, Belanger and Corvo are the top guys? We're trying to talk ourselves in to Justin Papineau? DT does well at the 2000 draft with Frolov, Lubo and kind of Lilja. He drafts two Euros that were already 24 since there was no time to try and incubate prospects based on how the team was built. When you look at the prospect history up until Frolov, it is no wonder that all of us were over the moon about him. WRAP AROUND AT FROZEN FURY!!!

To Taylor's credit, he almost pulled it off if not for the injuries to Allison and Deadmarsh but holy shit is that some horrific drafting during the 90s. I don't even know if I can call it a rebuild since it felt more like salary shedding v. a plan to build something from the ground up. They had a laughable development system. Is McKenna the best developed Roadrunner to play for the Kings?

 

[Yog S'loth]

Star players having career-destroying injuries.

Disastrous scouting department.

No minor-league system of our own for years.

Indecisive leadership.

Utterly bungled expansion draft deals.

 

[Reaper45]

Lieweke gets a pass from me. Yeah he meddled too much in the hockey, talked out of both sides of his mouth and could sell ice to an Eskimo but dude basically saved Major League Soccer.

 

[Fishhead]

I don't think it was even possible for the team to have a successful rebuild in the 90's, things were different. LA isn't a bad market, but it's not a hockey city. Look at how they made the finals back then, it was all about bringing guys in. It's always been about the Lakers and the Dodgers, and that's where entertainment money went.

Pre-cap, the Kings couldn't compete with a lot of the top franchises. Canadian teams had boatloads of cash, there aren't other games in town. Cities like Detroit had bad teams in other sports, especially after the Pistons runs in the late 80's/Early 90s. Even if the Kings had been draft wizards a lot of those players' heads would have been turned by more lucrative offers. There wasn't extra money lying around to build killer infrastructure or to dump into drafting anyways. It took a really rich guy bringing in the best player of all time to even get them there, but even then they weren't a dominant team.

The best thing timing-wise that happened was DL being brought in right after the cap was instituted. Really, building through the draft wasn't a successful model prior to that anyways.

 

[KINGS17]

Lieweke gets a pass from me. Yeah he meddled too much in the hockey, talked out of both sides of his mouth and could sell ice to an Eskimo but dude basically saved Major League Soccer.

 

[Reaper45]

Depends on if you like MLS and the Kings?

 

[DoktorJeep]

AFAIK, the Kings have done one rebuild, 2006 - 10. The current strategy included.

 

[lumbergh]

The Kings pretty much had no development program for their draftees and prospects. It’s no wonder few of them panned out.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

The Kings had no minor league system in place when the rebuild was taking place in the mid-90s in the post-Gretzky era. The Phoenix Roadrunners developed absolutely nobody, and when they ceased operations, the Kings placed a number of prospects on various AHL/IHL teams, from the Long Beach Ice Dogs to Fredericton Canadiens to the Springfield Falcons.

The way the Kings brought prospects up was trial by fire. Aki Berg had no business being in the NHL at 18, and his struggles were visible, as he looked like a creampuff playing against men. Jamie Storr was thrown to the wolves because the Kings had nobody else in the system who can step in for Hrudey, as Robb Stauber was utter garbage, and the only other option at the time was Pauli Jaks. So because of ineptitude, they forced themselves to play Jamie Storr, until McMaster made his boneheaded move to bring in Grant Fuhr.

So you have some stupid decisions from management and coaches in forcing prospects who shouldn't be in the pros to play in the NHL, coupled with the fact that they had zero control of how their prospects are coached in the minors.

Here's a list of players the Kings drafted in the 90s who became NHL regulars:

• Darryl Sydor (traded for garbage)
• Robert Lang (mishandled by the Kings)
• Alexei Zhitnik (traded in one of the dumbest moves in franchise history)
• Rem Murray (never played for the Kings, bolted as an unsigned prospect and found success in Edmonton)
• Jere Karalahti (preferred to party over hockey)
• Kimmo Timonen (given away so that the team can protect two incompetent goalies)
• Jamie Storr (had a promising career until he got shellacked in the playoffs and never recovered)
• Matt Johnson (cement head)
• Vitali Yachmenev (one-year wonder)
• Aki Berg (the Finnish Creampuff)
• Vladimir Tsyplakov (formed 1/3 of the Kings' Soviet line)
• Josh Green (throw-in in the Palffy/Smolinski trade)
• Eric Belanger (finally a player they developed properly, somehow)
• Olli Jokinen (centerpiece in the Palffy/Smolinski trade)
• Joe Corvo (took him five years after his draft year to turn pro, and did well offensively as one of the rare dmen to come through within the system)
• Mathieu Biron (part of the Palffy/Smolinski trade, never played for the Kings)
• Frantisek Kaberle (traded to Atlanta with Donald Audette for Kelly Buchberger and Nelson Emerson)
• Brian McGrattan (meathead who never played for the Kings)
• George Parros (Ivy League meathead who shows signs that he suffered many concussions throughout his playing career based on his decisions as the head of NHL Player Safety)

That's a list of 19 players over a 10-year period. Only two top six forwards drafted, only two-three top pairing defensemen, and just one goaltender who never could hold a permanent spot as a starter. I'd say at best, they were average at drafting, though leaning more towards below average based on the fact that so few became impact players on the Kings.

 

[Nasti]

I have no doubt that if Aki Berg and Jamie Storr were drafted and developed by the Red Wings, rather than being rushed into the NHL at 18, they would have had much more success.

 

[DryIslandBartender]

That Zhitnik trade still pisses me off.

 

[Nasti]

That Zhitnik trade still pisses me off.

While it was stupid asset management, the Kings got lucky in that Phillipe Boucher turned out to be as good a player. Unfortunately, they didn’t resign him when he became a free agent in the early 2000’s. Another dumb move.

 

[DryIslandBartender]

While it was stupid asset management, the Kings got lucky in that Phillipe Boucher turned out to be as good a player. Unfortunately, they didn’t resign him when he became a free agent in the early 2000’s. Another dumb move.

I’ve brought this up before but the Kings had good pieces to build around. They could have had a good top 4 in Blake, Zhitnik, Sydor, ODonnell for a decade plus.

The problem was the organization was TERRIBLE in identifying talent to help Gretzky, Kurri, Robitaille and replacing Hrudey. Bad trades just compounded everything.