Kings should score with a draft-day power play
The question is natural for anyone who is familiar with the Kings' horrendous draft history and has followed them through more than one rebuilding process and two general managers.
The Kings have the second pick Friday in an exceptionally deep entry draft. How will they mess this up?
"Boy, you're positive," General Manager Dean Lombardi said, laughing.
"Let's trade it."
Let's rephrase the question.
How do you not mess up this chance to accelerate a tedious overhaul that has frustrated your most loyal fans -- a group that, though dwindling, is larger than expected for a team that's 0 for 41 years?
"Probably not trade it," Lombardi said. "That's the first thing, the first test in the situation we're in."
And those tests will just keep on coming.
The Kings are at a crucial moment in their history, holding a pick that could have the biggest impact on the franchise since Wayne Gretzky arrived nearly 20 years ago.
In dumping coach Marc Crawford the Kings affirmed their intent to build from the defense outward. The cornerstones will be Jack Johnson, 2007 No. 4 pick Thomas Hickey and the player they'll take Friday in Ottawa.
They were slow to realize Crawford lacked the patience to help kids make the huge leap from junior or college hockey to playing defense in the NHL. Decent coaches are plentiful. Gifted, puck-moving defensemen are rare, but every Stanley Cup-winning team in recent memory has had one or more.
Lombardi will keep the pick, though his phone will ring until the Kings' turn comes up. He can see the rationale for trading it for immediate help and letting someone else take Drew Doughty or Zach Bogosian, but he can't take that chance now.
"In the end there's no right or wrong answer," he said. "But it would be a change of course, and that's not the orders I was given."
His mandate is to build around kids who could be Kings for a long time and won't have to leave to get their names etched on the Cup, as homegrown Kings Rob Blake and Luc Robitaille did.
It's not the cheap way to do things. If those kids shine, they will command significant salaries.
It's the only way that makes sense in a salary cap world and a way Lombardi believes will create the winning tradition that enveloped him when he scouted for the Philadelphia Flyers and he saw among the New Jersey Devils while watching from close range.
