Bollocks
Top Forward
Aside from losing our best defenseman and one of the few puck movers that we had on defense, little was lost. The only possible justification is that the Kings blueline prospect pool is so depleted for the next 2-3 years that Holland figured he'd extend the bottom pair for an extended duration so that he wouldn't have to waste a future summer signing some other pylons.
This guy gets it: It's Not the Taxes -- It's the LA Kings
Prime free agents are not going to want to come here and play boring ass hockey.
Defensively, Dumoulin+Ceci are most likely better than Gavrikov+Spence. Offensively, Clarke MUST be exposed to a bigger responsibility as a top 4 D-man. If he doesn't succeed in at least matching Spence's minutes and offensive ability, we're screwed anyways and it's all moot. If he does at least match him, the Kings haven't lost much in offensive capability from the back-end since Spence was hardly used in the playoffs anyways.
What we got was quite far from what we wanted and what was hyped, but I'm willing to wait until seeing this team play before passing too much judgement...