Los Angeles Kings: Rob Blake must patch leaky ship

New Los Angeles Kings general manager Rob Blake has the daunting task of cleaning up Dean Lombardi’s mess.

You’ll have to excuse Los Angeles Kings general manager Rob Blake if he looks east towards Las Vegas with an envious gaze. George McPhee, his Vegas Golden Knights counterpart, got to take over a franchise with the cleanest of slates. No bloated contracts, no dearth of draft picks and a fan base excited to fall in love with hockey.

Any NHL GM who assumes the mantle from a predecessor also inherits the mess which caused the job to become available. In Blake’s case, the creator was Dean Lombardi who brought Lord Stanley’s shiny trophy to glitter-obsessed Hollywood. The elation and luster of those remarkable seasons came crashing down around Lombardi as he made blunder after blunder, dishing out astonishingly bad contracts and pulling the trigger on numerous ill-conceived trades.

Every morning Blake must sit at his new desk and desperately try to figure out what course to set. With little room to maneuver under the salary cap, the former Los Angeles Kings star must move pieces around searching for answers that remain elusive.

The Solid Core

The core of the franchise is strong. Anyone looking at the Los Angeles Kings keeper list going into the expansion draft would see a foundation of players that would be the envy of any general manager. Anze Kopitar, Jeff Carter, Tyler Toffoli, Tanner Pearson, Drew Doughty, Alec Martinez, Jake Muzzin and Jonathan Quick, are all proven winners and legitimate stars. The problem comes when you look just under the surface of that illustrious group. Sure, there are some old favorites, a Cup-hoisting captain, a multi-season 40 goal scorer. But they are shells of their former selves, and most of them have oppressive, overpriced contracts whose ends are nowhere in sight.

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The playbook of Lombardi and former head coach Daryl Sutter was to roll out a heavy, back-ended, smothering system that wore down opponents. It was novel, it was effective and it yielded results. However, those days are gone and the league has become the antithesis of that model.

Once mighty, the Kings suddenly looked slow, porous and inept. Ranking 25^th in Goals For isn’t going to get the job done. Therein lies the biggest hurdle for Blake. Having just four skilled forwards capable of burying pucks makes the Kings very easy to line up against.

Teams with three solid lines can run over the best that new head coach John Stevens can send out on any given night. The remaining eight forwards need to find another gear, a way to kick it up a notch. Stevens must design a system that works with the pieces Blake gives him while fixing these glaring flaws.

Questions Abound

There are bright spots, battles that can be won during training camp, young stars who could emerge, notably Adrian Kempe, Nic Dowd and Jonny Brodzinsky. Perhaps a healthy Marian Gaborik thrives in a new, freewheeling system. It is possible that Dustin Brown continues an upward trajectory after sinking to the lowest of lows? Can Mike Cammalleri slot into the top line and bury feeds from Kopitar? Will the farm system develop a new wave of prospects ready to step in either due to injury or NHL-worthy play in Ontario?

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These are the questions that surely keep Blake awake at night. Not only because his job depends on it. But because thousands of Kings faithful are putting their trust in the man who once delivered bone-crushing checks, is enshrined in the Hall of Fame and whose jersey hangs from the Staples Center rafters.

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