Well this team sure seems to have gone through the rebuild phase in record team. Despite not having many years of top 3 picks like Colorado or Edmonton.
What I don't get is Vezina contender Cam Talbot. I don't follow other teams enough, and especially goalies. Presently he is sporting a career best .931 goals against. His history has been all over the place, good years, average years, poor years. Been pretty inconsistent over time and as a result bounced around a lot. Poke, whats up with him? Has he struggled with injuries, or is he one of those goalies that requires a very disciplined team system in front of him to do well? Curious about your thoughts?
Kings, doing the rebuild right.
Moderator: Bosc
Kings, doing the rebuild right.
Shoresy, "It's called a sweater"
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Pokecheque
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Re: Kings, doing the rebuild right.
I had a bunch of stuff all typed up yesterday and then shit hit the fan at work (one of our Ethernet switches took the dirt nap and knocked out our Internet) so I had to scramble like hell to fix it.
Anyway, I'm still not buying the hype with the Kings. Rob Blake has papered over some of his more egregious errors with the signing of Phillippe Danault and trade for Pierre-Luc Dubois, but I'm not sure this team is truly a legit contender. It most certainly will make the playoffs and might even go on a big run IF the goaltending holds up, but I just don't see enough gamebreaking talent. Depth, yes, but both Doughty and Kopitar are about a decade past their primes. Fiala is a solid talent but I wouldn't put him on gamebreaker status.
Oh and they haven't had a plethora of high picks, but one they absolutely whiffed on their fifth overall pick in 2021 (I think it was that year) with Alex Turcotte. I'm kinda surprised he was a full-on bust. I thought for sure he'd be at least approaching the same level as the rest of that insanely stacked USNTDP team with Caufield, Hughes, Zegras, etc. Byfield is finally rounding into form, not sure what his ceiling is at this point. Time will tell with another high pick, Brandt Clarke.
Talbot is a weird one. By far the most successful University of Alabama-Huntsville Charger of all time (fun fact, I guess he was briefly UAH teammates with another goalie named Wyatt Russell, yep, that Wyatt Russell who's the son of Kurt Russell and is now playing a Marvel superhero) and has had one very erratic career. Did well as a backup in New York, got snagged by the Oilers and put in a few good years, then promptly imploded. His last season in Ottawa was beset by injury according to him, either way it wasn't good, and now he's in Los Angeles doing okay. Sure seems like the Kings have just resigned themselves to signing second-tier starters and trying to make them work rather than trying to develop a guy from within (their attempt to do so with Cal Petersen could not have ended worse) or spend large on a big name. I guess they figure with a deep enough team and McLellan's defensive systems they can get the job done. As said earlier, I'm skeptical but I'm curious to see if it works.
I don't mean to totally slag on Blake as an executive, as I have done in the past. Dean Lombardi left the Kings in absolute shambles, and Blake was forced by ownership to rebuild around #s 11 and 8 no matter what. That's led to a front office that had to take some ill-advised gambles, like Ilya Kovalchuk and giving money and term to the aforementioned Cal Petersen.
Anyway, I'm still not buying the hype with the Kings. Rob Blake has papered over some of his more egregious errors with the signing of Phillippe Danault and trade for Pierre-Luc Dubois, but I'm not sure this team is truly a legit contender. It most certainly will make the playoffs and might even go on a big run IF the goaltending holds up, but I just don't see enough gamebreaking talent. Depth, yes, but both Doughty and Kopitar are about a decade past their primes. Fiala is a solid talent but I wouldn't put him on gamebreaker status.
Oh and they haven't had a plethora of high picks, but one they absolutely whiffed on their fifth overall pick in 2021 (I think it was that year) with Alex Turcotte. I'm kinda surprised he was a full-on bust. I thought for sure he'd be at least approaching the same level as the rest of that insanely stacked USNTDP team with Caufield, Hughes, Zegras, etc. Byfield is finally rounding into form, not sure what his ceiling is at this point. Time will tell with another high pick, Brandt Clarke.
Talbot is a weird one. By far the most successful University of Alabama-Huntsville Charger of all time (fun fact, I guess he was briefly UAH teammates with another goalie named Wyatt Russell, yep, that Wyatt Russell who's the son of Kurt Russell and is now playing a Marvel superhero) and has had one very erratic career. Did well as a backup in New York, got snagged by the Oilers and put in a few good years, then promptly imploded. His last season in Ottawa was beset by injury according to him, either way it wasn't good, and now he's in Los Angeles doing okay. Sure seems like the Kings have just resigned themselves to signing second-tier starters and trying to make them work rather than trying to develop a guy from within (their attempt to do so with Cal Petersen could not have ended worse) or spend large on a big name. I guess they figure with a deep enough team and McLellan's defensive systems they can get the job done. As said earlier, I'm skeptical but I'm curious to see if it works.
I don't mean to totally slag on Blake as an executive, as I have done in the past. Dean Lombardi left the Kings in absolute shambles, and Blake was forced by ownership to rebuild around #s 11 and 8 no matter what. That's led to a front office that had to take some ill-advised gambles, like Ilya Kovalchuk and giving money and term to the aforementioned Cal Petersen.
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Pokecheque
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Re: Kings, doing the rebuild right.
LMAO the Kings were so hasty in releasing a statement that they initially posted one that wasn't finished.
Re: Kings, doing the rebuild right.
To me it reads that they're confident in Rob Blake, his GM & VP, not Hiller himself. 
Posting your political views on social media is like sticking your head up your ass & whispering: You're just as likely to change someone's mind, and you'll always come out looking like a shithead.
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Pokecheque
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Re: Kings, doing the rebuild right.
So...how we feelin' about the rebuild now?
My God I don't how in the year Two-Thousand-Twenty-Five in The Year of Our Lord does an NHL team think it's a good idea to round out your defensive corps with old-as-hell Joel Edmundson, Brian Dumolin, and Cody Ceci. The team is old and slow as hell to begin with, why would you add to that? Not to mention that Ceci objectively sucks.
Kings rolled out some interesting third jerseys to start this season.
https://www.nhl.com/kings/news/kings-ju ... rd-jerseys
Basically it's the original uniform but with the current color scheme. Not bad per se, though they ditched the silver helmets in favor of gray ones with a matte finish and I think they kinda look cheap.
My God I don't how in the year Two-Thousand-Twenty-Five in The Year of Our Lord does an NHL team think it's a good idea to round out your defensive corps with old-as-hell Joel Edmundson, Brian Dumolin, and Cody Ceci. The team is old and slow as hell to begin with, why would you add to that? Not to mention that Ceci objectively sucks.
Kings rolled out some interesting third jerseys to start this season.
https://www.nhl.com/kings/news/kings-ju ... rd-jerseys
Basically it's the original uniform but with the current color scheme. Not bad per se, though they ditched the silver helmets in favor of gray ones with a matte finish and I think they kinda look cheap.
Re: Kings, doing the rebuild right.
boy, did that thread title ever come back to bite me in the ass. 
Shoresy, "It's called a sweater"
Re: Kings, doing the rebuild right.
Adrian Kempe 8x10.625M AAV.
They couldn't afford to lose him and Kopitar in the same offseason.
They couldn't afford to lose him and Kopitar in the same offseason.
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Pokecheque
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Re: Kings, doing the rebuild right.
As an Avs fan I am perfectly okay with them continuing their mediocre ways.E.L. wrote: Sun Nov 16, 2025 6:03 pm Adrian Kempe 8x10.625M AAV.
They couldn't afford to lose him and Kopitar in the same offseason.
Once again they've hit a hot streak and everyone is now like "Oh good they've figured it out/they've come together/blah blah blah narrative." Ahhhhhhhhhhh shaddap. They're just not good. They happen to have some decent pieces, choke the life out of the opposition (clutching and hacking and slashing and obstructing the whole way), hope the goaltending holds up, and string some wins together in a relatively weak division. Rinse and repeat until you meet up with the Oilers in the postseason and get summarily throttled.
Adrian Kempe is probably their best player right now. And he's *good* to be sure, very good in fact. But he's not a franchise-level talent.
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Pokecheque
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Re: Kings, doing the rebuild right.
Oh and just like the Rangers, they appear able to win on the road at will and then crash faster than Hawk Tuah's memecoin at Crypto Bro Arena.
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Pokecheque
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Re: Kings, doing the rebuild right.
At this point I cannot tell if Quinton Byfield and Brandt Clarke are just busts (admittedly Clarke is still a rookie, but he looks baaaaaaad) or they're suffering because they have the single worst coach in the NHL behind them on the bench.