Could 2021 be the final act of Jonathan Quick’s career with the Los Angeles Kings?
In the 15 years since he drafted by the Los Angeles Kings in the third round of the 2005 NHL Entry Draft, Jonathan Quick has become a Southern California institution.
Since initially breaking into then-head coach Terry Murray‘s goalie rotation full time in 2008, Quick has played in 726 games for the black and grey – 641 in the regular season and 85 in the playoffs – and holds the honor of having started all 46 games during the Kings’ two Stanley Cup championship runs.
But now, 13 years into his NHL career, one has to wonder just how many more games Quick has left in him, especially playing for LA’s premier hockey franchise.
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For better or worse, the Kings probably aren’t going to be winning a ton of games this season. They made a deal with the devil – leveraging their future to load up on talent – to beat the actual Devils (and Rangers too) and have since fallen out of contention in the Pacific Division. While this is great news in that it helped the team land potential franchise player Quinton Byfield, this shift into a full-on youth movement could signal a changing of the guard that sees plenty of long-time stars like Quick, Drew Doughty, Dustin Brown, and even captain Anze Kopitar have to continue on with their NHL careers elsewhere.
Would that be a tough pill to swallow? Most certainly, but what is the Kings’ goal right now?
At most, even if Byfield can pull off an impactful rookie campaign a la other top-five picks like Auston Matthews, the Kings are what, the fifth-best team in the Pacific Division? They’re probably better than the San Jose Sharks and have more top-end talent than the Anaheim Ducks, but could they hang in a seven-game series with the Arizona Coyotes? What about the Vancouver Cannucks? Don’t even get me started on the Calgary Flames, the Edmonton Oilers, or the Vegas Golden Knights – those teams are head and shoulders better than even the very best imaginable version of the Kings.
Again, this isn’t a big deal. The Kings traded a bunch of future assets to acquire players like Jeff Carter, Robyn Regehr, and Marián Gáborík, so it makes sense that their talent pool is a tad lighter than many of their peers. While LA remains an attractive place to sign in free agency, especially for the ever-growing collection of players from the area, this team needs a massive infusion of young ascending talent like Byfield to really usher in the next era of Kings hockey.
Assuming Quick performs at, above, or even just near his career average level – saving roughly 91.3 percent of his shots in 40ish games – there’s little reason to believe a handful of playoff-vying teams wouldn’t enter a bidding war of sorts to acquire the 34-year-old goaltender and the final two-plus years of his contract. At an AAV of $5.8 million, Quick is the 10th highest paid goalie in the NHL, but that number could go down if the Kings are willing to eat 20, 30, even 50 percent of the deal’s remaining money to make it more attractive.
With the second-most available salary cap space in the league behind their 2012 Stanley Cup Finals opponent, the New Jersey Devils, if the Kings can eat half of Quick’s contract and acquire a better asset in the process, why not do it? At $2.9 million adjusted AAV through the 2022-23 season, there isn’t a ‘good’ team in the NHL that wouldn’t want to add Quick to their goaltending stable moving forward.
The Kings, unfortunately, are not one of those ‘good’ teams; not anymore.
After a decade and a half in the Los Angeles Kings organization, seeing Jonathan Quick in a different jersey would be weird – but sometimes, weird isn’t a bad thing. With a path back to the postseason anything but clear – outside of the tried and true formula of player development – there’s little reason to waste the final three years of Quick’s massive 10-year, $58 million extension he signed all the way back in 2013 if a ‘better’ team is willing to surrender a solid pick and/or prospect to bring him into the fray. After 12 years of saving the team on the ice, it’s only fitting that the Kings’ longtime netminder could help to save their future too.