Before Jack Eichel was traded to Vegas were you saying he had the intangibles to lead a Cup contender? Matthew Tkachuk? Nate MacKinnon? Steven Stamkos? Nikita Kucherov?
All of these guys were star players who never won a cup until they did. There’s no reason to believe Matthews or Marner won’t lead their team a cup if they have the right team built around them. Just like all those players above and throw in McDavid and Draisaital.
I see your point, but this is still a very big risk, especially as I don't think it can be done without a NMC. And I don't think Marner is that close to players you mentioned in terms of impact. Maybe Eichel and Tkachuk, but both have other intangibles that are very important come playoffs time and most of them were on
stacked teams (one of them exploited loopholes in the CBA in order to ice that team for the playoffs).
The Kings are not stacked with such talent. Their chance is to try and emulate Panthers. Panthers have no high scoring, skill-first superstars that can afford to be "scoring passengers". They're built for PO hockey grind. Marner wouldn't help with that. Look at the Panthers' roster and their scoring spreads. No outliers they rely on for offense, just very balanced scoring all around.
Additionally, the Kings have historically "suppressed" quite a lot of high-end scorers when they came to this team.
Yes, Kings had big issues with PP this season, but Marner is surrounded by elite scorers in Matthews, Nylander, Tavares...is he going to be able to fix the Kings' PP with the Kings' main PP scoring threats being Kempe and the ever-enigmatic Fiala? Can the Kings rely on one player to fix one PP unit for the entire season+playoffs?
I mean, if you think about it Kopitar has not lead this team anywhere. Much of the leading was done by others when this team won its cups. That is the reality. I am still very grateful Kopi has been and is a King. Not trying to take anything away from him.
IMO Kopitar's leadership is more of a "grounded father figure", "team glue" type...he holds this team together, he represents loyalty and dedication to this sport.
He's a totally fine choice for a Captain.
It is however true that he needs to have a group of players around him that are different kind of leaders. And this is true for so many players. Kopitar is a bit similar to Datsyuk, but would Datsyuk win the cap-era Cup with Red Wings had he not been in a long-bearded winning culture with high character guys all over their roster? You could also argue Lidstrom wasn't your typical vocal captain either.
Look at this thread:
He was also the right choice. Calm, collected, talented, and experienced. It made perfect sense.
I think everyone saw him as the natural successor.
Whether or not Kopitar is or was the right Captain for this team is a non-issue. The problem always was that Lombardi failed to keep that team relevant in terms of personnel and Blake inherited an empty cupboard with very little room to improve without digging a hole so big it would last a decade.
Fact is - whoever thought Kopitar would ever "carry" this team on his back to the Cup was foolish, even McDavid has failed to do that so far, Crosby couldn't do it without Malkin, MAF and many others very talented players. Had Kopitar been the Captain back then and Brown the Ass.Captain, IMO the Kings win the Cup twice regardless.
And analog to this the Kings can't bank on a player like Marner to push this team over the edge (assuming nothing else on the roster changes in a meaningful way). I don't think Holland can afford to go all-in on one player while keeping the rest of the team more or less the same. There needs to be cap space left to assemble a legitimate 4th line, space for a top 4 D-man (resigning Gavy with a raise, or acquiring someone else), resigning Laf and eventually Kempe, too.
What this team really needs is Jack MF Johnson.
Yeah, but only so we can trade him for a player like Jeff Carter.
