You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.
Go to Page...
Thank you for crosschecking our sponsors!
About This Page: This is a discussion on News within the LetsGoKings.com forums, at Los Angeles Kings Hockey Fan Forum. THE PRESENT AND FUTURE KINGS
by santiclaws
INTRODUCTION
The Kings organization has never been consistently successful in its 40-year history and the highlight of the team’s existence is a single
The Kings organization has never been consistently successful in its 40-year history and the highlight of the team’s existence is a single appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals in 1993. The franchise now appears to be at a crossroads, having made a public commitment to rebuild the team from the ground up and make it a consistent winner. While the long-suffering LA Kings fans have heard the rhetoric about building a consistent winner before, the current ownership and management appear to be serious about building a team from the ground up – at least for now – and not attempting a “quick fix” as has been the team’s modus operandi for many years and through numerous prior regimes. With the 2008-2009 NHL season a little over a month away, Kings’ fans are debating the question of whether the latest attempt to turn around the franchise is simply more hot air designed to placate the fans or a genuine attempt to build a perennial powerhouse. This article will attempt to assess where the club stands and where it is likely to go in the near future by looking at three parts of the organization – the ownership, the General Manager and the players.
All parts of a sports (or any other) organization must work together to make the organization a success, but the fact is that success is a top-down phenomenon. If the leadership is not up to the task of building a winning organization, it is extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that the organization will succeed. With that in mind, let’s start by looking at the Kings’ current ownership group.
PART I – THE OWNERSHIP
The analysis of the present ownership of the Kings cannot be understood without some background. From 1988 through 1995, the team was owned by Bruce McNall, who had turned the team into a winner almost overnight, engineering the trade of Wayne Gretzky to the Kings and leading the team to the highlight of the franchise’s history – reaching the Stanley Cup finals for the first and only time in 1993. Shortly thereafter, the empire McNall had built started to crumble and he was forced to sell the team, which it turned he had badly mismanaged. McNall was subsequently convicted of fraud and conspiracy (he had obtained more than $260 million in fraudulent loans from ten banks) and was sentenced to nearly six years in prison. Anschutz Entertainment Group, Inc. (“AEG”) bought the Kings in 1995, when the team was in bankruptcy.
Philip Anschutz, the owner of AEG, is one of the richest men in America, with a personal net worth estimated at $7.8 billion. However, seemingly ever since the initial excitement of the team having been acquired by an ownership group with virtually unlimited resources, Kings’ fans have eyed AEG with some suspicion. That suspicion was based on AEG’s “ulterior motives” in acquiring the Kings. AEG had never hidden its plan to build a downtown arena, with the Kings as the main tenant, and use that arena as a base for lucrative real estate development in downtown Los Angeles – a plan in which AEG has been very successful in implementing. Fans have long suspected that the Kings have been used merely as a pretext for the expansion of Philip Anschutz’ real estate empire, with the team’s success, or lack thereof, being of no interest to anyone at AEG other than its effect on the bottom line. The perception has not been helped either by AEG’s aggressive pursuit of its development plans or the notable absence of Philip Anschutz from Staples Center, the arena which AEG built downtown soon after buying the Kings.
Notwithstanding the suspicions of the fans, it cannot be denied that AEG has not simply ignored the Kings or refused to invest money in the team. In addition to Staples Center, AEG built a new, state of the art training center for the Kings which was in itself a big step. The Kings’ previous training facility in Culver City was simply not suitable for a major league team. Other significant investments were made in additional organizational staff, facilities and infrastructure at both the NHL and minor league levels. AEG purchased not less than five European hockey teams. Under AEG ownership, the Kings finally acquired their own AHL affiliate, the Manchester Monarchs, as well as an ECHL affiliate, the Reading Royals. As of the 2008-2009 season, the Royals will no longer be affiliated with the Kings, as AEG has established an ECHL franchise in Southern California, the Ontario Reign. In short, the acquisition of the Kings by AEG resulted in the team for the first time in its history acquiring the facilities and infrastructure suited to a team at the NHL level.
However, despite the significant infusion of money into the team, AEG’s ownership of the Kings can hardly be described as a success story. The team has continued to flounder and other than a few exciting moments, AEG had had little to show for its investment in the hockey arena. These failures were partially due to some bad luck with injuries to key players, but mainly a result of AEG’s refusal to put the ultimate responsibility for the team into the hands of someone with necessary NHL experience.
Sports owners usually fall into two generally categories – the “hands on” owners, who attend most of the games and whose egos are in no small measure tied to their teams’ success, and the “hands off” owners who hand the duties of the day-to-day running of the team to (hopefully ) capable management with significant experience in the sport. Either approach can be successful if handled correctly. AEG, however, did not appear to fall into either category. The owner of the team, Philip Anschutz, was nowhere to be found and delegated the running of the team to the President of AEG, Tim Leiweke. Leiweke’s resume did include any NHL or hockey background and the Kings were not his primary responsibility as he was in charge of numerous other AEG ventures, both sports and non-sports related. Leiweke was nevertheless the public face of the organization, often overshadowing the Kings’ General Manager, Dave Taylor, who was hired by AEG after his predecessor, Sam “The Disaster” McMaster, was handed his walking papers in 1997.
In addition to having no hockey background, Leiweke was renowned for making bold predictions about the team and the league which did not come true often. As a result, die-hard Kings’ fans quickly dubbed him “Tim Lieweekly.” One of Leiweke’s most infamous quotes was his bold prediction in the fall of 2003 that fan favorite Adam Deadmarsh, who was out of the lineup with a concussion, would return “in November.” Deadmarsh never recovered from the concussion and retired after the 2004-2005 season without having played another game for the Kings. Leiweke was also one of the biggest supporters of the NHL’s lockout of the players by the owners, stating on numerous occasions that the salary system in the NHL was “broken” and that the Kings were waiting for the post-lockout NHL to really become competitive. Needless to say, the lockout came and went and the Kings’ fortunes did not change for the better. If anything, the team got worse.
The perception of many Kings’ fans was that AEG, and Leiweke in particular, hamstrung Taylor and would not allow him to gut the team in order to start fresh in order to make sure that Staples Center continued to be filled. The Kings continued to be mediocre under AEG’s stewardship, often ending up in the “black hole” at the end of the season – not bad enough to earn high draft picks which would turn into franchise players, such as Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, but not good enough to make a strong run at the Stanley cup.
In 2006, after another unsuccessful season, AEG fired Dave Taylor. There were several openings for General Manager in the summer of 2006, and to its credit, AEG moved aggressively to hire the candidate widely perceived as the most attractive – Dean Lombardi, the former General Manager of the San Jose Sharks. Lombardi had built a good organization in San Jose, until the team’s ownership meddled in the hockey operations to dismantle much of what had been a very promising core. In order to entice Lombardi to come to Los Angeles to guide a team in a non-traditional hockey market, AEG promised Lombardi significantly more power than had been given to Taylor. After Lombardi’s hiring, Leiweke faded into the background and Lombardi became the public face of the franchise – a tacit acknowledgement by AEG that Leiweke’s leadership of the team had been a failure. After Lombardi’s first year, in which the team ended up in next-to-last place after being at the bottom of the league for most of the season (costing itself the best chance obtaining the first overall draft pick and selecting a potential franchise with it), the franchise scrapped its prior stated goal, to “rebuild while remaining competitive” and went into full-scale rebuilding mode. Arguably, the upcoming season will be the first acknowledged “complete rebuilding” season in the history of the franchise. As a result of the team putting its faith in its talented youngsters, the 2008-2009 edition of the Los Angeles Kings will require a not-so-minor miracle to make it into the NHL playoffs.
Starting with the upcoming season, the Kings will be navigating uncharted waters – icing a team that the ownership acknowledges is not likely to do well in the hopes that the growing pains of today will bring a better tomorrow. Patience is not a commodity prior Kings’ owners have ever had in abundance. Obviously, the rebuilding phase cannot last forever and the team must eventually show signs of improvement. How long that takes, and whether AEG will have the stomach to stay the course while the team’s record remains poor and attendance suffers, only time will tell.
I do not believe they personally own any part of the team. To the best of my knowledge, it is owned by several corporate entities with AEG being the majority owner. AEG is in turn owned by Anschutz Corporation. From the AEG web site:
Quote:
AEG owns more sports teams and events than any other company in the world. AEG recognizes the entertainment value in sports and the emotional connection of its fans. From the NHL to the NBA, and Major League Soccer to championship boxing and world-class tennis, AEG focuses on marquee sports that inspire fans and ultimately drive revenue and capture market share.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crockett77
Cohen and Sudikoff purchased the club from McNall and ran the club for 1 season. Phil and Ed purchased the club out of bankruptcy court.
I know, I just didn't think it was important. The team ended up in bankruptcy because of McNall and Cohen and Sudikoff did not have the deep pockets of Anschutz and Roskie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crockett77
Before El Segundo the Kings training facility was in the Valley. Before that it was CC.
Yep, I forgot about the Ice-O-plex. It was still not an NHL-level facility though (sorry, Luc).
__________________ Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
The Present and Future Kings - Part I 
davidc1968
