Additions: Rob Blake, Dan Cloutier, Peter Harrold, Alyn McCauley, Patrick O’Sullivan, Scott Thornton, Brian Willsie, Raitis Ivanans
Subtractions: Luc Robitaille, Joe Corvo, Pavol Demitra, Mark Parrish, Jeremy Roenick
Analysis
I can’t quite follow the plan in Los Angeles this summer. Many of their moves - trading star forward Pavol Demitra for young stud O’Sullivan, letting Jeremy Roenick and others go - point to a team intent on rebuilding, the Kings also resigned the ageing Rob Blake and traded for Dan Cloutier. Which LA team will we see next year?
Trading Demitra was probably a neccessary and relatively safe move. O’Sullivan will walk onto the team immediately and the draft pick Minnesota threw in could easily pan out in a few years, as well. However, neither O’Sullivan nor Trevor Lewis (selected with the 17th pick the Kings received in the deal) will have any chance of replacing Demitra in the short term. Hopefully the two-for-one trade will, in a few years, cause the LA faithfull to forget Demitra’s 25 goals last season (not to mention the points he will almost undoubtedly pile up playing with Gaborik this year).
Trading for Cloutier, on the other hand, was a very poor decision. While they gave up very little (2nd round pick in 2007 and conditional pick in 2009), they took on a goaltender with a one year, $2.5 million contract who has had issues with consistency, success and health in the past few years. Cloutier is not good enough to bump the Kings into the playoffs with their current team.
Now, let me temper that last statement a bit. I think Cloutier is a better goaltender than he receives credit for, and I think that he can and has been a very capable starter. However, I don’t see him fitting into the long term plan in LA. If hes as good as he can be, he takes ice time away from the young LaBarbera, who last year showed flashes of his hopefully bright future. If LA is really the rebuilding team I for one think they are this year, they need to offer LaBarbera as much time as possible to develop.
One more “wft?” decision was the re-signing of Sean Avery. This guy’s antics got so bad that at the end of the season, the LA Kings told Avery he was not welcome to travel with, work out with, or play with the team. They essentially paid him not play. Avery is an agitator who can take other, better players off of their games, but he’s not good enough to take a roster spot away from a more complete player. And frankly, players like him shouldn’t have a place in the game. We should see a reduction in the agitator role under the new salary cap. Much like enforcers, while agitation can still be useful to a team, the player filling that role now has to have at least also be able to play fourth line minutes in all situations. Avery last year scored 15 goals before being sat out at the end of the season. That’s good enough, IF he can keep his antics under control. Comments such as the ones he made about French Canadian players and allegedly made about African American players serve as a rallying point for other teams and players. It never helps to give your opponent something to get fire up about.