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Originally Posted by activeStick
Kings GM Dean Lombardi emotionally tells of Mike Richards' 'destructive spiral
"Without a doubt, the realization of what happened to Mike Richards is the most traumatic episode of my career," Lombardi said in a written summation he provided to The Times on Friday. "At times, I think that I will never recover from it. It is difficult to trust anyone right now-and you begin to question whether you can trust your own judgment. The only thing I can think of that would be worse would be suspecting your wife of cheating on you for five years and then finding out in fact it was true.
http://www.latimes.com/la-sp-sn-king...009-story.html |
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"I heard the rumors that Mike might have some off-ice issues, but I refused to believe that they were true despite some obvious signs.
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What a load of crap. Lombardi and everyone in the league knew Richards had off-ice issues in Philadelphia. It's why the Flyers traded him in the first place. I would prefer he just be honest and tell the truth;
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"I heard the rumors that Mike might have some off-ice issues in Philadelphia but we felt our team was one or two players away from contending for the cup and thought he would be worth the risk. His contract is risky but if I don't win a cup in the next few years I may not be around anyway to deal with the aftermath.
Richards ultimately did play a big role in our first Stanley Cup and a smaller role in a 2nd Stanley cup but his play was starting to drop off and I was faced with using a compliance buyout on him. I decided after coming off our 2nd cup win that we could coerce him to come to camp in better shape so he could get back to the player he used to be, I could avoid egg on my face, and we could use him to help us win a 3rd cup while our team window is wide open.
Fast forward to the end of the season and not only are we outside the playoffs but our gamble failed and Richards play dropped off to the point we couldn't even justify keeping him on the roster. I scoured the NHL in search of a trade partner but every other team wanted to give us their bad contract in return and we really need to save this cap space so I can sign another defenseman and re-sign Kopitar. I'm pretty upset now as I know I should have used a compliance buyout on him and now the team is stuck with this contract. I'm going to talk to the teams lawyers and see if there is any way we can get out of this deal.
During draft week we caught wind of a border incident and first thing I do is call the lawyers and ask them how we can use this. It's determined by the lawyers that it's not enough to be able to terminate the deal but we can make it sound like we were caught off guard that this guy wasn't an angel off the ice, talk constantly about how we tried helping him and how he continued downward in a spiral and claim on our own he's breached the contract and terminate it. The union will appeal but we have nothing to lose here as we are going to have to buy him out regardless and any breaks we can get in a settlement or arbitrator decision is well worth it for us."
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