Building a team to be a potential Stanley Cup threat can be a tricky affair. You have to mix in your homegrown talent, trade acquisitions, and free agents and hope that your head coach can put the puzzle together to be a success for 82 regular season games as well as a long playoff haul that, hopefully, winds up with 16 victories at the conclusion while the team captain skates the Cup around the ice when it’s all said and done.
For Kings GM Dean Lombardi, his offseason has seen him put together a new Kings roster that’s seen him dump homegrown and drafted talent like Brayden Schenn and Wayne Simmonds in favor of young experience in Mike Richards. He’s also helped his team’s depth by signing former Oilers captain Ethan Moreau. While Moreau figures to be an experienced grinder for the Kings, he’s not the only former Oiler on the roster.
Dubiously, the Kings also added Colin Fraser in the deal that sent Ryan Smyth back to Edmonton. While Lombardi filed a formal grievance over that deal since Fraser is injured, former Oilers like Matt Greene and Jarret Stoll have been mainstays in Los Angeles since coming over in the deal that sent Lubomir Visnovsky to Edmonton back in the summer of 2008. Dustin Penner was brought in at the trade deadline to give Anze Kopitar another big winger capable of scoring goals and he’ll get a chance to show that his poor performance since joining the Kings was just a fluke.
Greene, Moreau, and Stoll all played together in Edmonton on the Oilers Stanley Cup finals team in 2006 while Penner joined them after winning the Cup with Anaheim in 2007. All four players were teammates on the 2007-2008 Oilers that finished three points out of a playoff spot in the Western Conference. While these guys have chemistry together in different ways, having them join up on a team that, at times, looked awfully tough to beat will make for an interesting experiment. The one thing that can be said about these 2011-2012 Kings is that they know what it’s like to go all the way.
Take a look at what their forward lines and defensive pairings could shape up to be for this season:Dustin Penner-Anze Kopitar-Justin Williams
Simon Gagne-Mike Richards-Dustin Brown
Kyle Clifford-Jarret Stoll-Brad Richardson
Ethan Moreau-Trevor Lewis-Kevin Westgarth
Drew Doughty-Willie Mitchell
Jack Johnson-Rob Scuderi
Matt Greene-Alec Martinez
The Kings will have other options to use at forward like Fraser, Scott Parse, and Andrei Loktionov with Davis Drewiske on defense as well. With Williams they have a guy who won the Cup with the Hurricanes against those Oilers in 2006 and with ex-Flyers Gagne and Richards, they’ve got guys who lost to Chicago in the Cup finals in 2010. Willie Mitchell was on the Minnesota Wild when they were swept out of the Conference finals in 2003 by Anaheim while Rob Scuderi was an instrumental piece to helping the Pittsburgh Penguins win the Cup in 2009.
When you look at all these acquisitions individually, it might make you scratch your head. After all, four guys from an Oilers team that went nowhere doesn’t look so hot. Throwing them all in the mix together with a host of guys that have won it all or lost in in the finals and you’ve got a team built to be tough and to go deep into the playoffs.
While we’ve seen the Los Angeles-Edmonton connection once before very famously in the Wayne Gretzky trade of 1988, this time around it’s a lot less profile and a bit more dubious. One thing is for sure, Lombardi hopes his L.A.-Edmonton connection can do something Gretzky never could for the Kings: Win the Stanley Cup.