[sureLoss]

Interesting take (yes article is a bit old):

http://mayorsmanor.com/2017/04/probl...r-three-years/

Since 2014, coming off a run that included two Stanley Cup parades in three years, the Los Angeles Kings have been plagued with constant questions surrounding what’s gone wrong. Theories have ranged from the loss of defenseman Slava Voynov to bad trades, from injuries to bad contracts, from a coach unwilling (or unable) to change his approach to a General Manager refusing to adapt his belief system. It’s no secret that fans have also thrown blame at Dustin Brown, Anze Kopitar, Jake Muzzin, and a myriad of other players. Yet, nobody actually had the definitive answer, nor a solution.

Then, everything changed in Calgary on March 19, 2017.

It became even more clear 10 days later, against that same Flames team.
A light switch was flipped on. Clouds parted. Answers were now obvious.
And the worst part about this revelation is it was in front of everyone the entire time. Perhaps it was a secret that people knew and didn’t talk about… or it was just missed, until last month.

“It sure was,” said new General Manager, Rob Blake, when we asked if the Drew Doughty-Matthew Tkachuk incident was as eye-opening for him as it was for us. “I don’t know if we handled that exactly right. Kyle Clifford did a tremendous job in warm-ups. I’m just not sure we handled it ideally the first 10 or 15 minutes of that game, and then you saw the situation with Jarome Iginla. Here’s a guy that has played 1,500 NHL games; he knew exactly what to do in the situation. And from that point on, the game kind of turned. You saw the emotion in that, [something] we hoped would drag in more and more throughout the season. [However, there has been] a turnover of some pretty key players in our organization and now we have to establish that.”
He’s right. The 2016-17 Kings largely lacked a key ingredient that has actually been absent for a few years. What was it exactly, you ask?

“When you look at our teams that won, we were so surrounded by incredible leadership,” noted Kings Assistant GM Mike Futa. “If you think about it, they were borderline Hall of Fame leaders – Mike Richards, Jarret Stoll, Matt Greene. And Justin Williams, that’s another level or form of grit. The amount of ‘pack mentality’ that we had, as far as team toughness, it was incredible… And it was brought to a clear head in that Calgary game. Being out of the playoffs aside, or where we were in the standings, to see the way that all unfolded kind of brought more of a focus on what was missing. When Jarome Iginla, who had only been part of our family for three or four weeks, is the guy that answered the bell the way our entire 2012-2014 teams would normally answer the bell for each other, there’s a concern.”

There is more to the article, but the gist is that while the core of the team largely remained the same, current management now feels that they lost some key leadership as the expendable non-core players were removed.

“I agree,” remarked Yannetti. “As management, now you have to bring in the right guys. A bridge player can be a bridge leader. A bridge player can be the guy who brings out the guy in Kopitar, Doughty, Toffoli, and Carter. We have to fix that chemistry. The players have to fix that chemistry and management has to fix the chemistry. I don’t think we are as far away as people think we are; but, as an organization, we need to make adjustments to give us the best possible chance to accelerate that process. I think it’ there, I think just needs to be — you have a bunch of chemicals and you don’t quite have the catalyzing agent. I’m not going to sit here and say I have all the answers. I don’t know what they catalyzing agent will be. I know it’s there, and that’s our job, everybody’s job, to find out what the final ingredient is.”