on the la kings and building a culture on emotion
Yo, I know the Kings are a grind-it-out hockey team and their goalie is a hothead, but let's take some time to back it up several paces and talk about the Kings being a franchise currently built on love and forgiveness.
Love? Forgiveness? Is this a rehash of that Jeff Carter and Mike Richards tale?
No, homie.
Not to blow your mind, but that was just a piece in a much longer, actually very deliberate culture shift for the Kings franchise. And I would argue that it's a huge part of why they win more than lose these days -- as much as being a team that got super into puck possession.
I've been thinking about this because I said on Twitter that Dustin Brown is absolutely the right captain for the Kings. I know that that's a little bold to some folks on account of hating him or, if you're a Kings fan, you might think it's lame that he's the captain while Anze Kopitar puts points together like the league's too easy. That's your prerogative and Bobby Brown once recorded a song about how prerogatives are important and people should let people live, so go ahead. But Dustin Brown is also the dude who bought in 1000% as soon as Dean Lombardi strolled in and said, "Hey, you want to win a Stanley Cup one day?"
Brown said, "Where's the needle, Dean? I'll thread it. I'll sew that banner."
I wasn't present for the conversation, but I'm pretty sure that's how it went. Prepare to be shocked as hell when it's one day revealed that Brown sewed that 2011-12 Stanley Cup Champions banner by hand.
Don't just take my word for it, though. Let's go back in time.
THE SCENE: April 2006. Dean Lombardi has to choose between GM opportunities in Los Angeles and Boston. He chooses LA.
In one of his first interviews about the approach he plans to take with the Kings, Lombardi said to the press --
"First off, I'm a builder, and I see the foundation put in place by Dave Taylor," he said. "People sometimes come in and make things look as bad as possible, to paint themselves as heroes. But that's not the case here."
Lombardi talked about the importance of team chemistry and the necessity for the players to "hang out together," stay positive and have fun.
It's his first day on the job, and he doesn't want to talk about winning, he wants to talk about having more fun. Hanging out together! Are you building a hockey team or an after-school program? It's unclear.
But, oh, he presses on. Lombardi's first order of business was to hire coach Marc Crawford, who'd won the Cup before and had some regular season success with the Canucks. The Kings needed regular season success first and foremost, so it made okay sense.
The next month, he drafts Jonathan Bernier, attacking what was long seen as the Kings' most obvious problem -- goaltending. So, not only will there be fun, but now the Kings are going to develop this highly-ranked goalie to also stop pucks and help win more games. Imagine! All! The Fun!
The franchise also brings on Ron Hextall and goaltending coach Bill Ranford. Then, Anze Kopitar comes to training camp. Ya boy Kopitar had been drafted under the old GM but stayed in Sweden for another year. No more of that. To North America! He makes the roster out of training camp and scores 2 goals in his first game. The first is assisted by Dustin Brown, with a very simple but ultimately exactly right chip to Kopitar.
Babe.
Brown had a lot of buzz for the Kings back then, because he was an effective physical presence but he could also score goals. A power forward with a lot of potential. Then Mr. Slovenian Soft Hands comes in and dances around Pronger. They would eventually be put on a line together regularly and have instant success, to the point where articles wrote things about them being "destined to play together" and "inseparable" (and oh, god, tell me about the bonding theories). So they've got these two young forwards showing promise. There's also a promising young goaltender in the system, and in early October Lombardi traded for Jack Johnson. He wouldn't play for the Kings until the following season, though.
Young talent has started to become a thing for a franchise that was, at the time, largely made up of older dudes. And these young guys are soft-spoken dudes who just want to play, but they also happen to still be on a team with people like Sean Avery, who notoriously taunted Dustin Brown for having a lisp and being in a relationship with a woman who wasn't cute enough in his useless opinion.
These days Brown downplays the idea that it bothered him much. He did back then too, but the quotes weren't as fine-tuned, and so you get the sense that Avery was definitely an asshole to Brown but Brown chose to put his head down rather than ever retaliate or dwell on it much.
From ESPN:
"That's just Aves," Brown said. "When Aves was here, he was hard on me, but at least in the stuff that deals with me, people have made it out to be a lot worse than it was. He'd hassle me, but at the same time, he'd joke with me, too. I think some other people looked at it in a different manner than I did. He didn't really bug me.
"I played with him for three years. Sometimes he made it not fun, but at the same time, the more I got to know him on the personal level, the more I could know what he was all about and you kind of just deal with it. Obviously, lately he's been in the media and he's made out to be a lot worse than it was with me. In L.A., he did some things that were annoying, but it wasn't really hard to deal with. He thrives on reaction and I'm one of those guys who kind of didn't give him any reaction. He didn't like it, but he liked it at the same time."
He wasn't the only person who Avery gradually irritated. Avery was already on the hot seat for shenanigans prior to Lombardi's hiring, and then halfway through the 2006-07 season, Lombardi traded Avery to the New York Rangers. BYE, BULLY.
The nicest thing Lombardi could to think to say about Avery was that he'd made some improvements.
"Sometimes players just take a little time to mature. Sean's still young, hopefully he'll continue to do so. He's going to a big stage now. If he continues [to mature], he'll do just fine. From the summer, when I first got there, there wasn't much of a market for Sean Avery. He's made progress."
They got young prospects in the trade for Avery. The Kings still don't make the playoffs, but the rebuild has begun. The 2007-08 season isn't anything spectacular either, but the Kings do improve their regular season record and Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar impress management by besting everyone else on the team in scoring.
Another notable thing here is that a series of coinciding injuries through the system sees Jonathan Quick go from starting in the ECHL to debuting in the AHL and then the NHL within the same month. December 6, 2007: The first time Brown, Kopitar, and Quick all play in the same game -- an 8-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres.
About 1:10 into the highlights you can check out the first appearance of a now-familiar Jon Quick glove save to rob an opponent at Staples Center:
In his post-game interview, Quick says, "I was just trying to have fun and enjoy it." Fun!
At the end of the 2007-08, the Kings fire Marc Crawford.
From the LA Times:
The Kings quietly cut Crawford loose Tuesday, two years and one month after saying they liked his "juice," General Manager Dean Lombardi's description of the energy Crawford displayed during his job interview.
That juice soured quickly, even for the Kings.
[...]
The Kings had more hope than skill and Crawford couldn't function under those circumstances, couldn't be patient with kids who were learning and making mistakes and needed a teacher more than they needed a screamer who demanded more than they were capable of delivering.
Why does Marc Crawford get fired? Because dude is too fucking mean. Lombardi's looking for a tough, defensive-minded coach who can mold young players, not holler at them. Crawford shows that's not his vibe. Peace.
This is highlighted when the new season starts up and Terry Murray's head coach. Reporters make him sound like a hippie in comparison.
Former LA Kings Insider Rich Hammond writes:
Want to know why this Kings team is different? There's a ping-pong table in the dressing room. The hand-eye coordination of ping-pong might help on the ice, but more important is the fact that the table is there in the first place. I have a hard time imagining that Marc Crawford ever would have allowed a ping-pong table in the room.
The mood in the dressing room seems decidedly more relaxed. Now, people can go around and around and debate the positives and negatives of having a "looser" dressing room, but the players seem much happier and at ease. Several have mentioned it without much prompting, as you've read in some of the interviews here. Watching practice, I've yet to see him yell at a player, never mind some of the cover-the-kids'-ears moments that used to take place with Crawford.
Here's the thing -- Crawford couldn't handle too many young players, and the Kings have decided to go all in on developing young talent at this point. Terry Murray's hiring coincides with the Kings naming Dustin Brown captain. At 23, Brown becomes the youngest player in franchise history to be captain. Kopitar and Matt Greene, who get the As, are also in their early 20s.
The entire leadership are a still a bunch of Bambis who have never been in leadership positions in the NHL. They don't have experience but they absorbed the philosophy Lombardi wants to be part of the Kings going forward and believe in it.
Brown, on taking the captaincy:
"The main thing here in L.A. is changing the culture of our team and making it a winning team," said Brown. "Once that happens, you'll see all the other stuff happening, especially in L.A. Playing in L.A. is great, but there's a lot of work to be done before we reap those benefits."
Murray on Brown:
That's a big change in his persona, from what I understand, from when he first came into this league. His contribution in the locker room is really good. He's got great awareness, has his finger on the pulse of the team as to how things are going off the ice, and on the ice, he's one of those guys who comes to play hard every day, every practice. That's what I love about him."
Robitaille on Brown:
"He came on board, and he was such a quiet kid, just playing the game and so forth. Now, he's taken on that leadership role. Last summer, he was out in the community everywhere and really has taken it upon himself to become this leader and take this team to another level. He's been part of this organization for a while and we haven't won much, and we wanted some changes, and he's been great."
There are some similarities to the way that Kopitar was talked about as he took on his new role.
"He's a clear-cut No. 1 center iceman in the league right now," says Coach Terry Murray, who succeeded Marc Crawford over the summer. "As we just get through this process of pushing younger guys to the next level, we're going to see a fantastic hockey player come out of this whole thing."
Kopitar has been lauded for his mixture of size, skill and speed, but Murray has been equally impressed by his vision on the ice, his leadership and maturity. Murray has a hard time believing Kopitar recently turned 21.
"He cares about people," Murray says. "You can tell that just by the way he handles himself, the questions he asks."
Brown has his finger on the pulse on the team's needs off-ice. Kopitar cares about people! They also work really hard. What's that? Dean Lombardi planting the seeds for a culture of winning by way of establishing a culture of caring.
The Kings had also drafted Drew Doughty over the summer, and he made the roster right away. Jonathan Quick didn't start the season with the Kings, but he gets called up after Jason Labarbera's traded in December and clings to the starter position in a way no one really expects since Bernier is around. (Part of that is that Lombardi felt Bernier was pouty about not getting called right away while Quick showed a relentless work ethic at all levels.) The Kings team finally starts to seem like they have a young core developing. The Kings still don't make the postseason, but Lombardi assures fans that the team is on the right track. Why? They've been working on establishing the right culture.
In a 2009 open letter to Kings fans:
There are numerous other benchmarks that measure the game within the game that signify the hope and direction that this group of young players provides. However, the most significant touchstone that inspires my beliefs comes from those signs that are not visible to even the trained eye. I am convinced that all great sports franchises must develop a soul. The soul of a franchise is its identity. It springs from the well inside each athlete learning to bury his ego and direct his energy toward caring about his teammates and the achievement of their common goal. While the salary-cap era has changed the inner dynamics of the team and the building process, I am convinced that this intangible remains the hallmark of great franchises. Once this culture is established, it has the ability to transcend generations and provide a template for what it means "to be a King." This sentiment is a powerful ally that instills in every player who wears the Kings Crown a unique brand of excellence that continually cultivates meaningful greatness.
At times during this past season, I have witnessed what I believe is the emergence of these ideals. During the high points, I never saw a player seek attribution or credit in order to pad his ego. Additionally, when we experienced failure and disappointment the temptation to assign blame never reared its divisive head. In short, I could sense this group of players care--which is a critical step. For only when an athlete truly cares about his team can he learn to push himself to the bounds of his ability and thereby become a true teammate. When 23 men excel as teammates, an identity will emerge and the "Los Angeles Kings" will immediately emit emotions of pride and excellence.
Emphasis mine.
Terry Murray starts Quick right out of training camp the next season, and he racks up 39 wins in 72 games played. Kopitar tops his previous best season by getting 34 goals and 81 points. Drew Doughty is a Norris trophy finalist. Brown, Johnson, Quick, and Michal Handzus all play for their countries in the Olympics. The Kings make it the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2001-02.
They lose to the Vancouver Canucks in six games, but everybody sees it as a necessary step in the process. The older players who were acquired commend younger players, and Brown shows that the club believes there's something to learn from losing.
"That's just part of the process," Brown said. "Sometimes you have to go through tough times like this before you can get to the next level."
Now that every guy on the LA roster has experienced the playoff atmosphere, they're determined to improve as a unit.
The club has been very patient with its prospects since Lombardi's arrival during the spring of 2006, and Murray says that no one's itching to press players into action.
Murray also likes the tone in the dressing room.
"We're seeing a great step forward by these young guys who have been drafted into the organization," he said. "The elevation of the pace has been dramatic by these young guys. I love the feeling of our team in the locker room, and the way they work together and stick together."
Let's gloss over the 2010-11 season, because it's more of the same in terms of the Kings process. One thing to note is that this is when the Kings acquire Dustin Penner. Though they had already acquired Justin Williams, Penner's addition to the Kings followed by Mike Richards in the summer, and then of course Jeff Carter in 2012 is what makes people really notice and then start reporting on another element to Lombardi's philosophy. Yes, he's really into molding young talent, especially talent that he thinks goes overlooked, and then encouraging them to band together, but he also has a penchant for finding guys who've worn out their welcome, whether in production or narrative or both, and then give them an opportunity to reinvent themselves.
Here's why Lombardi was convinced he'd made the right choice in the Richards trade, in addition to needing to fill a hole at second-line center:
"The kid was emotional about being traded, but it's my experience that if you've got a guy that's excited about being traded, generally that's not the guy you want. You want the guy that wears the jersey on his sleeve, his heart on his sleeve. I know this had to be hard on him. Very few players today will ever commit to a contract like he did, for that term, showing his loyalty. If we can get that here in L.A., that's exactly what we need. You've heard me talk about culture. This guy fits in that (Kyle) Clifford mode, that culture-changer.
Lombardi wants the guy that cares. Matt Greene had similarly talked about being upset and feeling really hurt when Edmonton traded him. Greene was vocal about changing the way he looked at his own summer trade, focusing on the fact that the Kings wanted him rather than the idea that Oilers didn't. Management and coaches gave Greene the A that fall. When Greene has been out of the Kings lineup with injury, Richards (who of course is a former captain) often gets the A for the Kings. Lombardi wants the guys that get upset.
When Carter was traded, he gave folks another glimpse into his feelings about nurturing young athletes (or the general lack thereof):
"How many of us are in a position to throw stones? We just never were celebrities enough, to where people wanted to take pictures of us. I do think that, given our culture with TMZ and things, I think stuff can get a little exaggerated. That said, I do think that athletes and professionals all go through a phase like we did in college. You've got to grow up and learn from it. They're no different from anybody else at a young age. Just because they're great athletes doesn't mean that, all of a sudden, they're not human beings. I think we have to recognize that, particularly in today's day and age, when we give them so much so early, that there's a growth process here that doesn't start as soon as you give a kid $50 million. It actually hurts that process. You're just hoping that these are good people that were brought up the right way and that, just like all of us, when we were at that stage of our lives, we weren't exactly all choir boys. So I think some of it as exaggerated. Knowing these kids as people, deep down I think they are your classic Canadian boys who will dream of winning the Stanley Cup. That will never leave them. Get some stuff out of your system and get back on track. You're banking on what's deeply inside of them, and they can get sidetracked like any young person. That's my speech on human nature, but I firmly believe it."
He did it again about a month later, as the Kings were fighting to hold on to a playoff spot and live up to preseason expectations that they'd be a big contender for the 2011-12 season.
"Tom Landry said, 'you have to convince an athlete to do what he doesn't want to do so he can become what he really wants to become.' He was right. We keep throwing all these temptations out there at our athletes: money, flattery, the media, all this stuff. But, like Landry said, deep down, the athlete wants to be a winner. It's just getting harder and harder to get to his soul," said Lombardi.
In order for an athlete to give an organization both his heart and soul, Lombardi believes you must foster an environment where the athletes take ownership in the team. Lombardi knows that a player is more likely to put everything on the line for his teammate than he is for his boss. That's why Lombardi brought the Kings core -- players like Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown, Jonathan Quick and Drew Doughty -- together as youngsters and allowed them to mature together.
Lombardi believes that once a team begins winning, the culture of success perpetuates itself. Especially when a team learns how to win together and takes accountability for its own success.
"Once your players feel they own the team, you've got it," said Lombardi, who has no trouble citing examples of teams that have instilled a winning culture from the inside out.
Team "Get to His Soul"!
Since Lombardi's arrival in 2006, there've been various mentions about how he tends to tell people he wants players so onboard with the franchise that they'd get the Kings logo tattooed on their butts. The "play for the guy next to you" philosophy is a big one in sports, and it runs deep in the Kings locker room these days. Every player acquired talks about how a number of Kings players reach out as soon as they hear the news. This includes Richards. This includes Carter, who's excelled with the Kings since he showed up. This includes, most recently, Marian Gaborik, who had a number of critics for being injury prone but has been a huge addition for the Kings so far and seemed to fit in well really quickly.
"I think it's a byproduct of our team atmosphere actually, in the sense that it's similar to when we traded for Carts," captain Dustin Brown said. "[Gaborik] fit right in very quickly and that's a result of the type of room we have and the type of players we have, where a guy can come in and feel pretty comfortable right away. A lot of times, if he feels comfortable off the ice, the on-ice stuff takes care of itself."
This echoes something that Mike Richards said specifically about Carter in 2013, when asked about why Carter had been playing so well.
"He's a guy, not only as a player, who likes to feel comfortable in his surroundings," said Richards, who played with Carter in Philadelphia. "When you're not like that, it's just not the same. Now he's feeling comfortable, after coming to a new team, getting to know everybody, getting to know the surroundings."
If you care about a guy and make him feel comfortable, he'll perform. That's what coming to LA is about.
Justin Williams is pretty much constantly talking about how much the Kings locker room believes in one another. He infamously closed the locker room door before Game 6 of the 2012 Stanley Cup Final to share some words with only his teammates.
Penner: There was a lot more tension from the fans and even from inside the locker room.
Williams: I was pacing around before the game, wondering if I was gonna say something.
Kopitar: Justin Williams closed the door and kinda gathered everybody around.
Williams: I just told everyone how much they meant to me, that I didn't want anyone to have any regrets about the game, and I wanted to remember each one of them as champions.
Lewis: I think his speech really made us have that good start.
And it would be wrong to think that the Kings' current coach, Darryl Sutter, doesn't fit into that model. Terry Murrary was brought on to shape a young core and really spread the hard-working but supportive and fun philosophy that Lombardi said would help turn the Kings into contenders. In the middle of 2011-12, Lombardi had to make a choice about the Kings' game and whether or not they'd plateaued under Murray. He decided to replace him with Sutter.
Some people, and by some people, I especially mean Noted Kings Doubter Scott Burnside thought hiring Sutter was "a lateral move at best."
Here's what Darryl Sutter said when he was first hired:
"I think X and O this team is as good as there is in the game. One thing that hasn't changed in this game ... it's men playing a boys' game and there is some emotion involved and I think that's what I have to get out of them."
It was still about emotion for Sutter (and Lombardi), sure, but leveraging it in a different way. Sutter is a tougher coach than Murray, but not in a Crawford way. He's not a guy who players talk about yelling all the time, but he will bait players to get the reaction he wants. Sometimes he does this by letting his players make fun of him, sometimes that's by sitting them, and sometimes it's by slipping in little digs to push their buttons at the right moment. It was a big part of how he motivated the Calgary Flames while he coached them, and he does the same with Kings players.
The aw-shucks demeanor aside, players say he's got a sarcastic streak. Nothing mean, nothing personal.
"He'll just say: 'Is this game too hard for you tonight?'" said Williams. "Just to get you angry. He knows what makes hockey players angry.
"He holds the players to a standard that he thinks we should be at all the time. He knows the right time to be relaxed. He knows the right time when the team is feeling good about themselves and he brings us down a little bit. He just makes sure and pushes the buttons to make sure we're ready."
[...]
But there's more to it than that. Kings GM Dean Lombardi -- no relation to the Leaf player -- remembers a point about 20 games into Sutter's tenure when things didn't really look much better. The Kings still had trouble scoring.
"He blamed himself," Dean Lombardi said of Sutter. "He said he should have seen this sooner. He showed me what he was going to do on the board, the changes he was going to make systematically.
"It was just really, a guy with his experience, he's beating himself up: 'This is my fault. It should have never got this far. We've got to make this adjustment.' I found it amazing he was blaming himself."
[...]
And as a motivator, there's no one like Sutter, says Kings captain Dustin Brown.
"He made sure we're attached to the games, getting into it from an emotional standpoint," said Brown. "It's hard to play game 55 of the regular season if you're not emotionally attached to it.
"He's an honest guy. If you're playing like crap, he's going to tell you. If you're playing good, he'll pat you on the back.
"Anyone can respect that. That's why players play for him."
From Dustin Penner, just before the 2012 SCF:
"He brings a passion, an intensity that I haven't seen before from a coach," said Dustin Penner. "I'm sure a lot of them have it intrinsically, but he wears his emotions and his heart on his sleeve. You can tell that he really cares about his players. He doesn't ask anything of his players that he doesn't ask of himself."
Yep, there it is again. He really cares. The players definitely know it. The mumbling and other shenanigans Sutter does during pressers -- everyone knows it's largely intentional, to take away attention from the players. Reporters know it, fans know it, and the players know it.
"We watched his game 5 post game presser. It was one of the better ones. He protects us very well. He's actually quite funny." Stoll
- Jason Gregor (@JasonGregor) May 1, 2014
Crank up the "High School Musical" soundtracks, because they're all in this together!
Look, I could go on forever about the quotes these people give about each other, about this franchise pretty much constantly. I, in fact, already have. AT CRAZY LENGTH. So I will leave you with a couple final things.
First: while the Kings were defending their championship title in 2013, Lombardi was asked if anything had changed for him now that the Kings had won a Stanley Cup. That was the ultimate goal, right? So, what now? What changes? Does anything?
From the get-go, Lombardi preached that players had to be "character guys," in addition to being skilled, or having other desired attributes. This was another point in Lombardi's plan that raised the hackles of detractors who believed it did not matter if a player was a cancer in the dressing room as long he was a skilled player.
But again, Lombardi has proven the naysayers to be wrong, as character and culture proved to be major factors in the Kings' success last season.
"I think our values and the culture we established really became paramount," said Lombardi. "That's never going to change. It's about team, it's about each other. That part I do know has to stay in place."
This remains true. The Kings continue to be a team that refuses to turn on each other during slumps. They still constantly talk about playing for the guy next to them. They still do things like have secret Halloween costume parties and Christmas pajama parties for the whole team, totally separate from anything organized by the franchise.
When the Kings recently went down 3-0 in the round one series vs the San Jose Sharks, everyone had the same kind of quotes. Early on, there was Sutter, saying that the Kings wouldn't go quietly to the public but saying something a little bolder to Lombardi.
Lombardi was asked what he thought when the Kings trailed 3-0 in the series against his old franchise, the Sharks. Sutter also was his coach in San Jose when Lombardi was GM there.
"We all know Darryl well enough to know that he's not going to tell you anything just to pump you up," Lombardi said. "It's about what he believes. I remember him with that steely stare.
"He said, 'I can guarantee you one thing: We're not going quietly.' He looked at me and said, 'We can still win this thing.'"
After they pulled off the comeback, Dustin Brown said this:
"I think it shows what type of team we have in here. Whether its fans or media or whoever, sometimes it doesn't always look very bright but -- unfortunately found ways to dig ourselves into a hole -- but we always find a way to climb on each others' backs and climb out. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about with this team."
The Kings went from a team used to losing, almost unfazed by it, to a team that doesn't ever think they won't find a way to turn it around. The reason they always think that is because, when shit gets hard, they remind themselves that they care about each other and believe in the other guys in the room.
Oh, yeah, and it may not be on the butt, but Jonathan Quick got that Kings tattoo.
Love? Forgiveness? Is this a rehash of that Jeff Carter and Mike Richards tale?
No, homie.
Not to blow your mind, but that was just a piece in a much longer, actually very deliberate culture shift for the Kings franchise. And I would argue that it's a huge part of why they win more than lose these days -- as much as being a team that got super into puck possession.
I've been thinking about this because I said on Twitter that Dustin Brown is absolutely the right captain for the Kings. I know that that's a little bold to some folks on account of hating him or, if you're a Kings fan, you might think it's lame that he's the captain while Anze Kopitar puts points together like the league's too easy. That's your prerogative and Bobby Brown once recorded a song about how prerogatives are important and people should let people live, so go ahead. But Dustin Brown is also the dude who bought in 1000% as soon as Dean Lombardi strolled in and said, "Hey, you want to win a Stanley Cup one day?"
Brown said, "Where's the needle, Dean? I'll thread it. I'll sew that banner."
I wasn't present for the conversation, but I'm pretty sure that's how it went. Prepare to be shocked as hell when it's one day revealed that Brown sewed that 2011-12 Stanley Cup Champions banner by hand.
Don't just take my word for it, though. Let's go back in time.
THE SCENE: April 2006. Dean Lombardi has to choose between GM opportunities in Los Angeles and Boston. He chooses LA.
In one of his first interviews about the approach he plans to take with the Kings, Lombardi said to the press --
"First off, I'm a builder, and I see the foundation put in place by Dave Taylor," he said. "People sometimes come in and make things look as bad as possible, to paint themselves as heroes. But that's not the case here."
Lombardi talked about the importance of team chemistry and the necessity for the players to "hang out together," stay positive and have fun.
It's his first day on the job, and he doesn't want to talk about winning, he wants to talk about having more fun. Hanging out together! Are you building a hockey team or an after-school program? It's unclear.
But, oh, he presses on. Lombardi's first order of business was to hire coach Marc Crawford, who'd won the Cup before and had some regular season success with the Canucks. The Kings needed regular season success first and foremost, so it made okay sense.
The next month, he drafts Jonathan Bernier, attacking what was long seen as the Kings' most obvious problem -- goaltending. So, not only will there be fun, but now the Kings are going to develop this highly-ranked goalie to also stop pucks and help win more games. Imagine! All! The Fun!
The franchise also brings on Ron Hextall and goaltending coach Bill Ranford. Then, Anze Kopitar comes to training camp. Ya boy Kopitar had been drafted under the old GM but stayed in Sweden for another year. No more of that. To North America! He makes the roster out of training camp and scores 2 goals in his first game. The first is assisted by Dustin Brown, with a very simple but ultimately exactly right chip to Kopitar.
Click to viewBabe.
Brown had a lot of buzz for the Kings back then, because he was an effective physical presence but he could also score goals. A power forward with a lot of potential. Then Mr. Slovenian Soft Hands comes in and dances around Pronger. They would eventually be put on a line together regularly and have instant success, to the point where articles wrote things about them being "destined to play together" and "inseparable" (and oh, god, tell me about the bonding theories). So they've got these two young forwards showing promise. There's also a promising young goaltender in the system, and in early October Lombardi traded for Jack Johnson. He wouldn't play for the Kings until the following season, though.
Young talent has started to become a thing for a franchise that was, at the time, largely made up of older dudes. And these young guys are soft-spoken dudes who just want to play, but they also happen to still be on a team with people like Sean Avery, who notoriously taunted Dustin Brown for having a lisp and being in a relationship with a woman who wasn't cute enough in his useless opinion.
These days Brown downplays the idea that it bothered him much. He did back then too, but the quotes weren't as fine-tuned, and so you get the sense that Avery was definitely an asshole to Brown but Brown chose to put his head down rather than ever retaliate or dwell on it much.
From ESPN:
"That's just Aves," Brown said. "When Aves was here, he was hard on me, but at least in the stuff that deals with me, people have made it out to be a lot worse than it was. He'd hassle me, but at the same time, he'd joke with me, too. I think some other people looked at it in a different manner than I did. He didn't really bug me.
"I played with him for three years. Sometimes he made it not fun, but at the same time, the more I got to know him on the personal level, the more I could know what he was all about and you kind of just deal with it. Obviously, lately he's been in the media and he's made out to be a lot worse than it was with me. In L.A., he did some things that were annoying, but it wasn't really hard to deal with. He thrives on reaction and I'm one of those guys who kind of didn't give him any reaction. He didn't like it, but he liked it at the same time."
He wasn't the only person who Avery gradually irritated. Avery was already on the hot seat for shenanigans prior to Lombardi's hiring, and then halfway through the 2006-07 season, Lombardi traded Avery to the New York Rangers. BYE, BULLY.
The nicest thing Lombardi could to think to say about Avery was that he'd made some improvements.
"Sometimes players just take a little time to mature. Sean's still young, hopefully he'll continue to do so. He's going to a big stage now. If he continues [to mature], he'll do just fine. From the summer, when I first got there, there wasn't much of a market for Sean Avery. He's made progress."
They got young prospects in the trade for Avery. The Kings still don't make the playoffs, but the rebuild has begun. The 2007-08 season isn't anything spectacular either, but the Kings do improve their regular season record and Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar impress management by besting everyone else on the team in scoring.
Another notable thing here is that a series of coinciding injuries through the system sees Jonathan Quick go from starting in the ECHL to debuting in the AHL and then the NHL within the same month. December 6, 2007: The first time Brown, Kopitar, and Quick all play in the same game -- an 8-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres.
About 1:10 into the highlights you can check out the first appearance of a now-familiar Jon Quick glove save to rob an opponent at Staples Center:
In his post-game interview, Quick says, "I was just trying to have fun and enjoy it." Fun!
At the end of the 2007-08, the Kings fire Marc Crawford.
From the LA Times:
The Kings quietly cut Crawford loose Tuesday, two years and one month after saying they liked his "juice," General Manager Dean Lombardi's description of the energy Crawford displayed during his job interview.
That juice soured quickly, even for the Kings.
[...]
The Kings had more hope than skill and Crawford couldn't function under those circumstances, couldn't be patient with kids who were learning and making mistakes and needed a teacher more than they needed a screamer who demanded more than they were capable of delivering.
Why does Marc Crawford get fired? Because dude is too fucking mean. Lombardi's looking for a tough, defensive-minded coach who can mold young players, not holler at them. Crawford shows that's not his vibe. Peace.
This is highlighted when the new season starts up and Terry Murray's head coach. Reporters make him sound like a hippie in comparison.
Former LA Kings Insider Rich Hammond writes:
Want to know why this Kings team is different? There's a ping-pong table in the dressing room. The hand-eye coordination of ping-pong might help on the ice, but more important is the fact that the table is there in the first place. I have a hard time imagining that Marc Crawford ever would have allowed a ping-pong table in the room.
The mood in the dressing room seems decidedly more relaxed. Now, people can go around and around and debate the positives and negatives of having a "looser" dressing room, but the players seem much happier and at ease. Several have mentioned it without much prompting, as you've read in some of the interviews here. Watching practice, I've yet to see him yell at a player, never mind some of the cover-the-kids'-ears moments that used to take place with Crawford.
Here's the thing -- Crawford couldn't handle too many young players, and the Kings have decided to go all in on developing young talent at this point. Terry Murray's hiring coincides with the Kings naming Dustin Brown captain. At 23, Brown becomes the youngest player in franchise history to be captain. Kopitar and Matt Greene, who get the As, are also in their early 20s.
The entire leadership are a still a bunch of Bambis who have never been in leadership positions in the NHL. They don't have experience but they absorbed the philosophy Lombardi wants to be part of the Kings going forward and believe in it.
Brown, on taking the captaincy:
"The main thing here in L.A. is changing the culture of our team and making it a winning team," said Brown. "Once that happens, you'll see all the other stuff happening, especially in L.A. Playing in L.A. is great, but there's a lot of work to be done before we reap those benefits."
Murray on Brown:
That's a big change in his persona, from what I understand, from when he first came into this league. His contribution in the locker room is really good. He's got great awareness, has his finger on the pulse of the team as to how things are going off the ice, and on the ice, he's one of those guys who comes to play hard every day, every practice. That's what I love about him."
Robitaille on Brown:
"He came on board, and he was such a quiet kid, just playing the game and so forth. Now, he's taken on that leadership role. Last summer, he was out in the community everywhere and really has taken it upon himself to become this leader and take this team to another level. He's been part of this organization for a while and we haven't won much, and we wanted some changes, and he's been great."
There are some similarities to the way that Kopitar was talked about as he took on his new role.
"He's a clear-cut No. 1 center iceman in the league right now," says Coach Terry Murray, who succeeded Marc Crawford over the summer. "As we just get through this process of pushing younger guys to the next level, we're going to see a fantastic hockey player come out of this whole thing."
Kopitar has been lauded for his mixture of size, skill and speed, but Murray has been equally impressed by his vision on the ice, his leadership and maturity. Murray has a hard time believing Kopitar recently turned 21.
"He cares about people," Murray says. "You can tell that just by the way he handles himself, the questions he asks."
Brown has his finger on the pulse on the team's needs off-ice. Kopitar cares about people! They also work really hard. What's that? Dean Lombardi planting the seeds for a culture of winning by way of establishing a culture of caring.
The Kings had also drafted Drew Doughty over the summer, and he made the roster right away. Jonathan Quick didn't start the season with the Kings, but he gets called up after Jason Labarbera's traded in December and clings to the starter position in a way no one really expects since Bernier is around. (Part of that is that Lombardi felt Bernier was pouty about not getting called right away while Quick showed a relentless work ethic at all levels.) The Kings team finally starts to seem like they have a young core developing. The Kings still don't make the postseason, but Lombardi assures fans that the team is on the right track. Why? They've been working on establishing the right culture.
In a 2009 open letter to Kings fans:
There are numerous other benchmarks that measure the game within the game that signify the hope and direction that this group of young players provides. However, the most significant touchstone that inspires my beliefs comes from those signs that are not visible to even the trained eye. I am convinced that all great sports franchises must develop a soul. The soul of a franchise is its identity. It springs from the well inside each athlete learning to bury his ego and direct his energy toward caring about his teammates and the achievement of their common goal. While the salary-cap era has changed the inner dynamics of the team and the building process, I am convinced that this intangible remains the hallmark of great franchises. Once this culture is established, it has the ability to transcend generations and provide a template for what it means "to be a King." This sentiment is a powerful ally that instills in every player who wears the Kings Crown a unique brand of excellence that continually cultivates meaningful greatness.
At times during this past season, I have witnessed what I believe is the emergence of these ideals. During the high points, I never saw a player seek attribution or credit in order to pad his ego. Additionally, when we experienced failure and disappointment the temptation to assign blame never reared its divisive head. In short, I could sense this group of players care--which is a critical step. For only when an athlete truly cares about his team can he learn to push himself to the bounds of his ability and thereby become a true teammate. When 23 men excel as teammates, an identity will emerge and the "Los Angeles Kings" will immediately emit emotions of pride and excellence.
Emphasis mine.
Terry Murray starts Quick right out of training camp the next season, and he racks up 39 wins in 72 games played. Kopitar tops his previous best season by getting 34 goals and 81 points. Drew Doughty is a Norris trophy finalist. Brown, Johnson, Quick, and Michal Handzus all play for their countries in the Olympics. The Kings make it the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2001-02.
They lose to the Vancouver Canucks in six games, but everybody sees it as a necessary step in the process. The older players who were acquired commend younger players, and Brown shows that the club believes there's something to learn from losing.
"That's just part of the process," Brown said. "Sometimes you have to go through tough times like this before you can get to the next level."
Now that every guy on the LA roster has experienced the playoff atmosphere, they're determined to improve as a unit.
The club has been very patient with its prospects since Lombardi's arrival during the spring of 2006, and Murray says that no one's itching to press players into action.
Murray also likes the tone in the dressing room.
"We're seeing a great step forward by these young guys who have been drafted into the organization," he said. "The elevation of the pace has been dramatic by these young guys. I love the feeling of our team in the locker room, and the way they work together and stick together."
Let's gloss over the 2010-11 season, because it's more of the same in terms of the Kings process. One thing to note is that this is when the Kings acquire Dustin Penner. Though they had already acquired Justin Williams, Penner's addition to the Kings followed by Mike Richards in the summer, and then of course Jeff Carter in 2012 is what makes people really notice and then start reporting on another element to Lombardi's philosophy. Yes, he's really into molding young talent, especially talent that he thinks goes overlooked, and then encouraging them to band together, but he also has a penchant for finding guys who've worn out their welcome, whether in production or narrative or both, and then give them an opportunity to reinvent themselves.
Here's why Lombardi was convinced he'd made the right choice in the Richards trade, in addition to needing to fill a hole at second-line center:
"The kid was emotional about being traded, but it's my experience that if you've got a guy that's excited about being traded, generally that's not the guy you want. You want the guy that wears the jersey on his sleeve, his heart on his sleeve. I know this had to be hard on him. Very few players today will ever commit to a contract like he did, for that term, showing his loyalty. If we can get that here in L.A., that's exactly what we need. You've heard me talk about culture. This guy fits in that (Kyle) Clifford mode, that culture-changer.
Lombardi wants the guy that cares. Matt Greene had similarly talked about being upset and feeling really hurt when Edmonton traded him. Greene was vocal about changing the way he looked at his own summer trade, focusing on the fact that the Kings wanted him rather than the idea that Oilers didn't. Management and coaches gave Greene the A that fall. When Greene has been out of the Kings lineup with injury, Richards (who of course is a former captain) often gets the A for the Kings. Lombardi wants the guys that get upset.
When Carter was traded, he gave folks another glimpse into his feelings about nurturing young athletes (or the general lack thereof):
"How many of us are in a position to throw stones? We just never were celebrities enough, to where people wanted to take pictures of us. I do think that, given our culture with TMZ and things, I think stuff can get a little exaggerated. That said, I do think that athletes and professionals all go through a phase like we did in college. You've got to grow up and learn from it. They're no different from anybody else at a young age. Just because they're great athletes doesn't mean that, all of a sudden, they're not human beings. I think we have to recognize that, particularly in today's day and age, when we give them so much so early, that there's a growth process here that doesn't start as soon as you give a kid $50 million. It actually hurts that process. You're just hoping that these are good people that were brought up the right way and that, just like all of us, when we were at that stage of our lives, we weren't exactly all choir boys. So I think some of it as exaggerated. Knowing these kids as people, deep down I think they are your classic Canadian boys who will dream of winning the Stanley Cup. That will never leave them. Get some stuff out of your system and get back on track. You're banking on what's deeply inside of them, and they can get sidetracked like any young person. That's my speech on human nature, but I firmly believe it."
He did it again about a month later, as the Kings were fighting to hold on to a playoff spot and live up to preseason expectations that they'd be a big contender for the 2011-12 season.
"Tom Landry said, 'you have to convince an athlete to do what he doesn't want to do so he can become what he really wants to become.' He was right. We keep throwing all these temptations out there at our athletes: money, flattery, the media, all this stuff. But, like Landry said, deep down, the athlete wants to be a winner. It's just getting harder and harder to get to his soul," said Lombardi.
In order for an athlete to give an organization both his heart and soul, Lombardi believes you must foster an environment where the athletes take ownership in the team. Lombardi knows that a player is more likely to put everything on the line for his teammate than he is for his boss. That's why Lombardi brought the Kings core -- players like Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown, Jonathan Quick and Drew Doughty -- together as youngsters and allowed them to mature together.
Lombardi believes that once a team begins winning, the culture of success perpetuates itself. Especially when a team learns how to win together and takes accountability for its own success.
"Once your players feel they own the team, you've got it," said Lombardi, who has no trouble citing examples of teams that have instilled a winning culture from the inside out.
Team "Get to His Soul"!
Since Lombardi's arrival in 2006, there've been various mentions about how he tends to tell people he wants players so onboard with the franchise that they'd get the Kings logo tattooed on their butts. The "play for the guy next to you" philosophy is a big one in sports, and it runs deep in the Kings locker room these days. Every player acquired talks about how a number of Kings players reach out as soon as they hear the news. This includes Richards. This includes Carter, who's excelled with the Kings since he showed up. This includes, most recently, Marian Gaborik, who had a number of critics for being injury prone but has been a huge addition for the Kings so far and seemed to fit in well really quickly.
"I think it's a byproduct of our team atmosphere actually, in the sense that it's similar to when we traded for Carts," captain Dustin Brown said. "[Gaborik] fit right in very quickly and that's a result of the type of room we have and the type of players we have, where a guy can come in and feel pretty comfortable right away. A lot of times, if he feels comfortable off the ice, the on-ice stuff takes care of itself."
This echoes something that Mike Richards said specifically about Carter in 2013, when asked about why Carter had been playing so well.
"He's a guy, not only as a player, who likes to feel comfortable in his surroundings," said Richards, who played with Carter in Philadelphia. "When you're not like that, it's just not the same. Now he's feeling comfortable, after coming to a new team, getting to know everybody, getting to know the surroundings."
If you care about a guy and make him feel comfortable, he'll perform. That's what coming to LA is about.
Justin Williams is pretty much constantly talking about how much the Kings locker room believes in one another. He infamously closed the locker room door before Game 6 of the 2012 Stanley Cup Final to share some words with only his teammates.
Penner: There was a lot more tension from the fans and even from inside the locker room.
Williams: I was pacing around before the game, wondering if I was gonna say something.
Kopitar: Justin Williams closed the door and kinda gathered everybody around.
Williams: I just told everyone how much they meant to me, that I didn't want anyone to have any regrets about the game, and I wanted to remember each one of them as champions.
Lewis: I think his speech really made us have that good start.
And it would be wrong to think that the Kings' current coach, Darryl Sutter, doesn't fit into that model. Terry Murrary was brought on to shape a young core and really spread the hard-working but supportive and fun philosophy that Lombardi said would help turn the Kings into contenders. In the middle of 2011-12, Lombardi had to make a choice about the Kings' game and whether or not they'd plateaued under Murray. He decided to replace him with Sutter.
Some people, and by some people, I especially mean Noted Kings Doubter Scott Burnside thought hiring Sutter was "a lateral move at best."
Here's what Darryl Sutter said when he was first hired:
"I think X and O this team is as good as there is in the game. One thing that hasn't changed in this game ... it's men playing a boys' game and there is some emotion involved and I think that's what I have to get out of them."
It was still about emotion for Sutter (and Lombardi), sure, but leveraging it in a different way. Sutter is a tougher coach than Murray, but not in a Crawford way. He's not a guy who players talk about yelling all the time, but he will bait players to get the reaction he wants. Sometimes he does this by letting his players make fun of him, sometimes that's by sitting them, and sometimes it's by slipping in little digs to push their buttons at the right moment. It was a big part of how he motivated the Calgary Flames while he coached them, and he does the same with Kings players.
The aw-shucks demeanor aside, players say he's got a sarcastic streak. Nothing mean, nothing personal.
"He'll just say: 'Is this game too hard for you tonight?'" said Williams. "Just to get you angry. He knows what makes hockey players angry.
"He holds the players to a standard that he thinks we should be at all the time. He knows the right time to be relaxed. He knows the right time when the team is feeling good about themselves and he brings us down a little bit. He just makes sure and pushes the buttons to make sure we're ready."
[...]
But there's more to it than that. Kings GM Dean Lombardi -- no relation to the Leaf player -- remembers a point about 20 games into Sutter's tenure when things didn't really look much better. The Kings still had trouble scoring.
"He blamed himself," Dean Lombardi said of Sutter. "He said he should have seen this sooner. He showed me what he was going to do on the board, the changes he was going to make systematically.
"It was just really, a guy with his experience, he's beating himself up: 'This is my fault. It should have never got this far. We've got to make this adjustment.' I found it amazing he was blaming himself."
[...]
And as a motivator, there's no one like Sutter, says Kings captain Dustin Brown.
"He made sure we're attached to the games, getting into it from an emotional standpoint," said Brown. "It's hard to play game 55 of the regular season if you're not emotionally attached to it.
"He's an honest guy. If you're playing like crap, he's going to tell you. If you're playing good, he'll pat you on the back.
"Anyone can respect that. That's why players play for him."
From Dustin Penner, just before the 2012 SCF:
"He brings a passion, an intensity that I haven't seen before from a coach," said Dustin Penner. "I'm sure a lot of them have it intrinsically, but he wears his emotions and his heart on his sleeve. You can tell that he really cares about his players. He doesn't ask anything of his players that he doesn't ask of himself."
Yep, there it is again. He really cares. The players definitely know it. The mumbling and other shenanigans Sutter does during pressers -- everyone knows it's largely intentional, to take away attention from the players. Reporters know it, fans know it, and the players know it.
"We watched his game 5 post game presser. It was one of the better ones. He protects us very well. He's actually quite funny." Stoll
- Jason Gregor (@JasonGregor) May 1, 2014
Crank up the "High School Musical" soundtracks, because they're all in this together!
Look, I could go on forever about the quotes these people give about each other, about this franchise pretty much constantly. I, in fact, already have. AT CRAZY LENGTH. So I will leave you with a couple final things.
First: while the Kings were defending their championship title in 2013, Lombardi was asked if anything had changed for him now that the Kings had won a Stanley Cup. That was the ultimate goal, right? So, what now? What changes? Does anything?
From the get-go, Lombardi preached that players had to be "character guys," in addition to being skilled, or having other desired attributes. This was another point in Lombardi's plan that raised the hackles of detractors who believed it did not matter if a player was a cancer in the dressing room as long he was a skilled player.
But again, Lombardi has proven the naysayers to be wrong, as character and culture proved to be major factors in the Kings' success last season.
"I think our values and the culture we established really became paramount," said Lombardi. "That's never going to change. It's about team, it's about each other. That part I do know has to stay in place."
This remains true. The Kings continue to be a team that refuses to turn on each other during slumps. They still constantly talk about playing for the guy next to them. They still do things like have secret Halloween costume parties and Christmas pajama parties for the whole team, totally separate from anything organized by the franchise.
When the Kings recently went down 3-0 in the round one series vs the San Jose Sharks, everyone had the same kind of quotes. Early on, there was Sutter, saying that the Kings wouldn't go quietly to the public but saying something a little bolder to Lombardi.
Lombardi was asked what he thought when the Kings trailed 3-0 in the series against his old franchise, the Sharks. Sutter also was his coach in San Jose when Lombardi was GM there.
"We all know Darryl well enough to know that he's not going to tell you anything just to pump you up," Lombardi said. "It's about what he believes. I remember him with that steely stare.
"He said, 'I can guarantee you one thing: We're not going quietly.' He looked at me and said, 'We can still win this thing.'"
After they pulled off the comeback, Dustin Brown said this:
"I think it shows what type of team we have in here. Whether its fans or media or whoever, sometimes it doesn't always look very bright but -- unfortunately found ways to dig ourselves into a hole -- but we always find a way to climb on each others' backs and climb out. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about with this team."
The Kings went from a team used to losing, almost unfazed by it, to a team that doesn't ever think they won't find a way to turn it around. The reason they always think that is because, when shit gets hard, they remind themselves that they care about each other and believe in the other guys in the room.
Oh, yeah, and it may not be on the butt, but Jonathan Quick got that Kings tattoo.