by santiclaws
PART II – THE GENERAL MANAGER “With the belief there are no shortcuts, Lombardi & Co. began stocking the system with high draft selections and vowed patience while the prospects developed…
In the meantime, Lombardi scoured the league for veterans who had the following characteristics: grit, determination, leadership qualities and a track record for winning. It didn't matter if these players were past their primes. They would make great examples for young players, and teach them how to be pros.”
Sharks Midseason Report, San Francisco Chronicle, January 8, 2001.
Career Prior to Joining the Kings
Dean Lombardi grew up in Ludlow, Massachusetts. He played college hockey at Elmira College his freshman year, and later transferred to the University of New Haven where he was selected the scholar/athlete his senior year, and served as captain his junior and senior years.
Lombardi graduated with honors from Tulane University Law School. He started his career as a players’ agent and then moved over to the management side as an assistant general manager to Jack Ferreira with the Minnesota North Stars in 1988 and then became an assistant general manager with the Sharks, once again working for Ferreira.
Lombardi finally reached the position of General Manager with the Sharks in March of 1996. He inherited a dismal franchise which finished the 1995-1996 NHL season with 47 points. Lombardi immediately set to work revamping the entire organization. His first order of business was restructuring the scouting department because he believed that the Sharks’ future success depended on drafting well. He surrounded himself with experienced hockey minds and using the draft, trades and free agent signings proceed to give the Sharks a blood transfusion. Two years after Lombardi became the Sharks’ General Manager, only four players remained from the team he inherited.
Lombardi’s work with the Sharks paid off quickly with the Sharks enjoying a 15-point improvement in Lombardi's first full season as General Manager during the 1996-1997 season. The Sharks continued getting better and improved their regular season point totals for six straight seasons under Lombardi, an accomplishment achieved only twice in NHL history – by Lombardi with the Sharks and by Hall of Famer Bill Torrey, who built the Islanders’ dynasty in the late ‘70s. In addition to improving their point total for six consecutive seasons, the Sharks made the playoffs five seasons in a row, although they never managed to advance past the second round.
Much of the Sharks success under Lombardi can be attributed to drafting well. The core of the team was built through the draft as the Sharks’ first round picks included Patrick Marleau, Brad Stuart, Scott Hannan, Marco Sturm and Marcel Goc. In addition to successful first-round picks, the Sharks also did very well in later rounds, picking up players such as Jonathan Cheechoo and Matte Carle in the second round, Christian Ehrhoff in the fourth round, Mikael Samuelson in the fifth round and Vesa Toskala, Mark Smith and Ryan Clowe in the sixth round.
The Sharks finished the 2001-2002 season with 99 points, their highest point total ever, and won their first-ever Pacific Division title. The regular season-success was again followed up by playoff heartbreak in the second round as the Sharks, after going up 3-2 in the series against Colorado and returning home for games six and seven, lost both by one goal – game six by a score of 2-1 on a Forsberg overtime goal and game seven by a score of 1-0, thanks to the playoff magic of Patrick Roy. The playoff disappointments notwithstanding, after six successive seasons of improvement and five consecutive playoff appearances, the Sharks rewarded Lombardi with a four-year contract extension.
While Lombardi's player evaluation skills and dealmaking abilities were commended, the Sharks seemed to engage in more annual holdouts with their top players than any other team. Lombardi claimed the holdouts resulted from his attempts to stick close to a tight budget.
SI.com, March 18, 2008.
The Sharks were a team on the rise and were projected to continue their success in the 2002-2003 NHL season. Instead, the Sharks suffered through a disastrous campaign. Nabokov, a restricted free agent represented by agent Don Meehan (if the name sounds familiar, it may be because he represents O'Sullivan), held out at the beginning of the season, as did defenseman Brad Stuart. The team struggled mightily in their absence with a young goaltending duo and a patchwork defense.
The Sharks finally signed Nabokov at the end of October to only a two-year contract, at the end of which Nabokov would become an unrestricted free agent. Lombardi had tried to sign Nabokov to a long-term deal but could not do so and admitted that the team’s struggles had a big influence on the decision to cave in and sign Nabokov to only a two-year deal. "Who we kidding here? To say that the performance of the team does not factor into the urgency of your analysis is just not being truthful,'' said the always blunt Lombardi.
For his part, Stuart missed the first fifteen games of the season before finally agreeing to terms. Nabokov never regained his form of the season before and neither did the team, going from 99 points and a Pacific Division crown in the previous season to 73 points and missing the playoffs in 2002-2003. In March of 2003, less than a year after receiving a four-year contract extension, Lombardi was fired (but not before receiving the kiss of death, aka “a vote of confidence,” a month before). The speculation at the time was that the Sharks’ new ownership was looking to cut payroll, and Lombardi, despite making a number of deals which reduced the Sharks’ payroll significantly, was unable to deal high-priced Teemu Selanne, Vincent Damphousse and Adam Graves. It is not clear how much of that inability to deal the players was Lombardi’s fault, as Selanne did not want to leave San Jose, Damphousse could not work out a deal with the Avs, to whom he had nearly been traded, and the Flyers backed out of a handshake deal for Graves at the last minute.
In August of 2003 Lombardi was hired as a scout by the Flyers, where he stayed until becoming the General Manager of the Kings in April, 2006.
Lombardi Joins the Kings
According to Lombardi, when he was hired he presented the Kings’ ownership with three possible paths for the team – acquire free agents and try to make the playoffs every season, tear the whole thing down and start over, or attempt to combine the two seemingly opposite approaches. AEG chose the “neither here nor there” route – rebuilding while “remaining competitive.” After two years, it became quite clear that this approach has not been working and AEG has now agreed to let Lombardi do what probably would have been his choice in the beginning, starting from scratch while acknowledging freely that the team was in “rebuilding” mode.
As he did in San Jose, in Los Angeles Lombardi preaches the need for organizational depth, which he is working to build through the draft and trades. The “Lombardi Doctrine” states that marquee free agents are not essential in the process of rebuilding a team and the time to really focus on acquiring top-flight free agents is when the team has already built a solid foundation through the draft and/or trades and has only a hole or two to fill. The current team has more holes than foundation, so it is not surprising that the free agents Lombardi has acquired are veterans who he hopes will mentor “the kids” in the ways of being a professional and winning.
The Coaches
[imgr="black"]http://www.letsgokings.com/images/lomb_murray.jpg[/imgr]
“With so many changes can come mistakes, and Lombardi admits one he made was the hiring of head coach Al Sims before last season. He recognized the problem quickly, however, and replaced the fired Sims with one of the league's most respected coaches, Darryl Sutter.”
San Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 1998 Marc Crawford
Lombardi’s first significant move as the Kings’ General Manager was the hiring of Mark Crawford in May of 2006. After two dismal seasons, Crawford was fired in the summer of 2008. The biggest criticism which can be leveled at the Crawford-coached Kings is that the team often seemed to simply give up if things were not going their way. This was not the case in Colorado or Vancouver where Crawford coached previously.
Whether it was because Crawford was a “screamer” whom the younger players simply tuned out or for some other reason, Crawford’s Kings did not appear to want to play hard for him. When the Kings decided to scrap their previous plan to “rebuild while remaining competitive,” commit to a full rebuild and rely primarily on their youngsters going forward, a determination was made that Crawford was not the man to teach the young players how to be successful in the NHL and get the young team to perform to its potential.
While the ultimate responsibility for Crawford’s failure to get the most out of the team must be placed at Lombardi’s feet, it is difficult to say that Lombardi made a mistake in hiring Crawford. At the time Crawford was hired he was a very highly regarded young coach, having already coached the Colorado Avalanche to a Stanley Cup. The Kings were just beginning their “rebuild while remaining competitive” experiment and Crawford obviously had developed a good dynamic in the Colorado locker room managing to successfully blend the talents of Colorado’s veterans and youngsters. Thus, on paper, the hiring looked like it may have worked out well. As is often the case, what looked good on paper did not translate well to the ice.
Terry Murray
The hiring of Terry Murray was a surprise to many Kings’ fans, as the general feeling was that the Kings would look to hire a younger, up-and-coming coach without prior NHL experience who could “relate to the kids.” Murray is a 58-year-old who has been an NHL head coach on three prior occasions, with Philadelphia, Washington and Florida, with a regular season mark of 360-288-89. Murray’s most successful playoff team was the Philadelphia Flyers, which reached the conference finals, the conference semifinals, and the Stanley Cup Finals in his three seasons (1995 – 1997). After being fired as Panthers’ coach in 2001, Murray returned to the Flyers, where he has been an assistant coach since 2003. Murray received a considerable amount of credit for grooming the youngsters on Philadelphia’s current roster and has a reputation as a calm, approachable coach who has good teaching skills. On paper, he would seem to be a good fit for the young Kings’ team. As usual, whether his style will mesh well with this group of players remains to be seen. As was the case in San Jose after Al Sims’ short tenure, Lombardi’s continued employment is riding on the success of his second coaching selection.
Next: Part II continued – Lombardi’s transactions 
THE PRESENT AND FUTURE KINGS - Part II 
