Today on XM and NHL Live, Gretzky gave an interview where he explained that the NHL season has four seasons of intensity:
1. Pre-Season;
2. Regular Season;
3. Post-Season’s First Three Rounds
4. Stanley Cup Final
This analysis provides some clarity perhaps as to why the Penguins’ play and results are different than the prior rounds, just as was also seen with Ottawa last year. I suspect that is also why players like now retired Claude Lemieux were so infuriating. He plain displayed no consistent effort until the latter two seasons of intensity. If a player loses their on-switch until the post season, and that very same team fails to get into the play-offs, do you want a roster spot on your team for someone who doesn’t start playing until April? This obviously can be pretty crazy making all around.
How does this apply specifically to the Kings?
That is very simple. With Los Angeles being a team and an organization in flux, which has gaping holes on both defense and inexperience overall in the two latter seasons of intensity, Lombardi will be looking for players who have made it to the Final Four. When copiously trying to be the best armchair GM possible, look at the NCAA’s Frozen Four, the NHL’s Conference and Stanley Cup Finals as well as the AHL Calder Conference and Finals when scouting potential Kings’ draft picks, trade prospects and potential unrestricted free agent signings.
If Lombardi sticks to his formula, then when he looks to trade for the younger defenseman Hextall alluded to last week, or when the Kings look at the draft, cue on the players who have won. Period. The Kings first need a culture and second, it better be building/aspiring to be a winning one at that. The best way to develop that is to start with known winners. As O’Sullivan told Jim Fox late in the season this year,
the Kings players should no longer be satisfied with individual success alone.
That is a proxy that has afflicted the Kings forever. The fans are now conditioned for mediocrity. Any long term fan of the Kings knows this to be true. The only way to change that is to take action and to take action now. One of the first quotes from Lombardi I remember is him suggesting that the Los Angeles locker room had an unacceptable surplus of players who were paycheck guys. (As in, my ice time, my specialty team ice, my points, my … my … my….)
With hindsight, clarity and the first full season of Lombardi having his entire team in place, fans should both expect and demand to have Lombardi’s actions match his words. To date, I have never seen him or Hextall do otherwise.
I am done being conditioned for mediocrity. I expect more and I have no doubt others share in this belief. Sports is a scoreboard world and it is time for the Kings to have consistently better scoreboards to gain any credibility at all to their fans, to prospective free agents and to the entire NHL.
The clock is on the Kings. Go….
Carla Muller Carla.hockeygal@att.net 
Carla Muller
The NHL's Four Seasons of Intensity 
