Marner Watch

Statue4Deano said:
Let’s be serious. Not even McJesús could save that organization.
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I mean, I hate them as much as you do but they finished with 80 points last season. A year of development of their young stars plus McD and and another veteran or two and they are competing for #1 in the West in 2026-2027 IMO.

Edit: Competing with SJ / Chi / Utah / LV / Seattle to make things worse...
 
Pickle_Pucks said:
I mean, I hate them as much as you do but they finished with 80 points last season. A year of development of their young stars plus McD and and another veteran or two and they are competing for #1 in the West in 2026-2027 IMO.

Edit: Competing with SJ / Chi / Utah / LV / Seattle to make things worse...
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I expect them to take a step back this year, and that Verbeek loads up on 2026 Picks
 
Birdman said:
I expect them to take a step back this year, and that Verbeek loads up on 2026 Picks
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Totally disagree. Anaheim is poised to take a big step forward this coming season, and another in 2026-7.

Anaheim and Utah both project to be playoff teams next season which may leave the Kings on the outside looking in if they can't pull off some magic in the FA/trade market.
 
DryKing said:
Totally disagree. Anaheim is poised to take a big step forward this coming season, and another in 2026-7.

Anaheim and Utah both project to be playoff teams next season which may leave the Kings on the outside looking in if they can't pull off some magic in the FA/trade market.
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All the more reason that NOW is the time for the Kings to push the chips all in. If not only to keep pace with the improvements in the rest of the west.
 
Statue4Deano said:
He could sign in San Jose or Chicago for the same amount of money and he’d be surrounded by far more talented players than LA. Those teams are younger but their depth and ceilings are higher especially when you add McDavid on their 1st lines.

The Kings as they stand today have about a 2 year window where they can still push the best team in the Conference to Game 6/7. In year 3 suddenly Doughty is 38 years old. Kopi is long retired while Fiala & Kempe are 31 years old leaving their scoring prime.

Rob Blake did an abysmal job of layering NHL level talent drafted and developed internally. This is partly why I believe he gave up as GM. He saw the blackhole staring him right in the face and he didn’t have the stomach to guide the team through it any longer.

Yes we all love Byfield and most of us like Clarke but he missed on Turcotte. That miss created a giant hole in the development pipeline where the team creates young internal replacements for older more expensive vets. He also missed on 6/7 out of 8 2nd round picks from 2017-2023. The one 2nd round pick that did hit was a home run in Brock Faber but he traded him for Fiala. Again gaping holes in the development pipeline. 1st and 2nd round picks are absolutely vital in creating team depth in age layers. All those missed mean instead of 10 or 11 22-25 year olds fighting to make an impact on the NHL roster now we’ve got 4. It was 5 but Holland just traded away Spence.

Anyway all of this is why I was hoping there would be a real push for Marner as a shortcut to buy some time to fix the broken prospect pipeline but no dice. Same thing can be applied to McDavid. He won’t want to be part of this mess either.
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If one missed 5th overall is the end-all, be-all for a GM, then half of GMs would get fired each year in the NHL.

Drafting was least of Rob's problems. And missing out on good Turcotte has much more to do with bad luck with his injuries than it does with misjudging his talent.

Rob's main problem was not even his own (the fact that upper management wanted to win-now from the get go and as a result the team missed out on one season worth of rebuild/retool) and the fact that he left with net negative asset balance without anything significant to show for it, i.e. he failed to build a winning team that could get over the Oiler hump. But that's something 98% of other GMs would most likely fail to do considering what he had to work with. And it could be worse, he could've traded more picks for failed deadline acquisitions.


Ultimately, when a team lacks assets, the UFA market is where you can fix that and UFA is a problem for this team for a very long time now...it's probably why we have seen some questionable contract extensions and personnel decisions. Once players get in LA IMO they usually like playing there and it makes sense to resign them rather than letting them walk and then whiffing on the UFA market...
 
Statue4Deano said:
A potential new wrinkle…

View attachment 12368
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emsomaso said:
I know it the pooslinger Eklund, but pretty interesting anyway regarding the ever cheating Vegas:

HockeyBuzz.com - Eklund - “The Appearance of Evil.” On Marner…. LA Fed Up. Byram for Byfield?

www.hockeybuzz.com www.hockeybuzz.com

Although the Byfield for Byram talk is some serious horse💩
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F**k Vegas. I want the Kings to get Marner but I know it's not guaranteed he would come here. But I don't want to lose him to f**king Vegas. And of course they tampered to try to get him. Not only that but they're talking about putting Pietrangelo on LTIR to use his cap money to sign Marner. Which we all know means he'll be magically cured & ready for game 1 of the playoffs. But would the league ever punish the Vegas Golden Boys? Yeah, right.
 
Pickle_Pucks said:
I mean, I hate them as much as you do but they finished with 80 points last season. A year of development of their young stars plus McD and and another veteran or two and they are competing for #1 in the West in 2026-2027 IMO.

Edit: Competing with SJ / Chi / Utah / LV / Seattle to make things worse...
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It's a lot easier to go from really horrible to not half bad. Especially when you've stacked lottery picks. Getting up to even a playoff contender is a lot harder. I'm not totally convinced Verbeek knows what he's doing.
 
Bollocks said:
If one missed 5th overall is the end-all, be-all for a GM, then half of GMs would get fired each year in the NHL.
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Missing on the #5 pick is not a big deal in and of itself. (Lombardi missed at #4 in ‘07 @ #13 in ‘08) My broader point was missing consistently in Rounds 1 & 2 which happened a lot under Blake puts the team behind the 8 ball in terms of assets. The league standard rate at which 1st and 2nd round picks become NHLers is significantly greater than rounds 3-7.

Dwindling assets is why the Kings are where they’re at today in terms of prospect pool and 4 consecutive years of being bounced in the 1st round of the playoffs.
 
Bollocks said:
If one missed 5th overall is the end-all, be-all for a GM, then half of GMs would get fired each year in the NHL.

Drafting was least of Rob's problems. And missing out on good Turcotte has much more to do with bad luck with his injuries than it does with misjudging his talent.

Rob's main problem was not even his own (the fact that upper management wanted to win-now from the get go and as a result the team missed out on one season worth of rebuild/retool) and the fact that he left with net negative asset balance without anything significant to show for it, i.e. he failed to build a winning team that could get over the Oiler hump. But that's something 98% of other GMs would most likely fail to do considering what he had to work with. And it could be worse, he could've traded more picks for failed deadline acquisitions.


Ultimately, when a team lacks assets, the UFA market is where you can fix that and UFA is a problem for this team for a very long time now...it's probably why we have seen some questionable contract extensions and personnel decisions. Onceplayers get in LA IMO they usually like playing there and it makes sense to resign them rather than letting them walk and then whiffing on the UFA market...
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At one point Kings were ranked 1, 1, and 2 overall for their prospect pool. Not all will work out, but clearly a few Blake was counting on simply didn’t. Kaliyev and Bjornfot are the big ones, and you can put Turcotte and Thomas in their own category of disappointment.

Bigger issue is he failed to trade assets. Vegas has used assets for trades that have really panned out. So has Colorado. Blake made one successful trade using a prospect chip and that was Fiala. That he could never parlay any of these pieces into more help on the left side is malpractice.
 
So by the sounds of it, our current best chance to land Marner is a) Vegas signs him and gets caught tampering and loses him or b) Vegas shies away from signing him, because of fear of a tampering charge. Yeah, that sounds like typical LA Kings odds of landing a major UFA lol. I guess the other way is just figure out what Vegas is offering and up it. Basically, we're not getting him. Hope Holland has some other good ideas.
 
Illegal_Stick said:
So by the sounds of it, our current best chance to land Marner is a) Vegas signs him and gets caught tampering and loses him or b) Vegas shies away from signing him, because of fear of a tampering charge. Yeah, that sounds like typical LA Kings odds of landing a major UFA lol. I guess the other way is just figure out what Vegas is offering and up it. Basically, we're not getting him. Hope Holland has some other good ideas.
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Time to send the Marner Watch in for servicing.

And now we pivot!
 
Illegal_Stick said:
So by the sounds of it, our current best chance to land Marner is a) Vegas signs him and gets caught tampering and loses him or b) Vegas shies away from signing him, because of fear of a tampering charge. Yeah, that sounds like typical LA Kings odds of landing a major UFA lol. I guess the other way is just figure out what Vegas is offering and up it. Basically, we're not getting him. Hope Holland has some other good ideas.
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You've got it backwards. If he's traded to Vegas, as he's expected to be today, there'll be no tampering charge because TO won't file a complaint. And even if the trade falls through, they wouldn't lose Marner, they may lose a pick or two. So this thread can be renamed "Watch Marner go to Vegas."
 
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santiclaws said:
You've got it backwards. If he's traded to Vegas, as he's expected to be today, there'll be no tampering charge because TO won't file a complaint. And even if the trade falls through, they wouldn't lose Marner, they may lose a pick or two. So this thread can be renamed "Watch Marner go to Vegas."
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sorry yes, trade would negate it, but you can lose the player and have the contract terminated if caught tampering. Not likely but that is one of the possibilities.
 
Illegal_Stick said:
O

sorry yes, trade would negate it, but you can lose the player and have the contract terminated if caught tampering. Not likely but that is one of the possibilities.
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Pretty sure the NHLPA would grieve the cancellation of any contract if the player wanted it. The league knows what it can control on tampering, it'll be punishment to the franchise only.

In any case, the more this thing is smoking about the trade that keeps not happening the less I believe any of it's true. Fried was pretty emphatic about putting a lot of qualifiers on his reports.
 
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Kuzmenko Watch has begun.
 
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