LOS ANGELES — The vision was laid out before the Los Angeles Kings even had a chance to pour champagne in the Stanley Cup.
It was Darryl Sutter, the astute head coach, that looked beyond the euphoria of the franchise’s first championship two springs ago and saw the big picture. There was a party-like atmosphere at Staples Center for that particular clincher, with Los Angeles handily beating New Jersey 6-1, and Sutter was asked immediately afterwards what it was like to finish things off in such comfortable fashion.
“It’s pretty awesome,” he said. “It’s the feeling of seeing them so happy, the work that you go through. The first thing you think about as a coach is: ‘These guys are all young enough, they’ve got to try it again.”
Here they are.
We have entered a new stage in the Stanley Cup cycle, one where a select few franchises like the Kings are competing for their place in history. The exact same thing played out in the Boston-Chicago final last year as the Blackhawks became the first multi-time champions in the Salary Cap Era.
The buzzword coming out of the 2004-05 lockout was “parity” and there’s reasonable evidence to suggest that it existed for a time. However, that is slowly changing. This week the New York Rangers will become the 13th different team to compete in the Stanley Cup final over the last nine years.
In the nine seasons prior to that? There were 11. Not a huge difference.
Part of the reason behind it is the way team-building has evolved under the salary cap. There was so much talk of parity in a cap system because it was anticipated that market forces would make it impossible to keep great teams together.
Outside of the 2010 Blackhawks, which had to shed some relatively key pieces immediately after winning the Stanley Cup, that hasn’t ended up being the case.
There has been a drag on the salaries of top players in recent years. Alex Ovechkin signed a monster deal that pays him a little more than $9.5-million annually in January 2008 and it hasn’t been eclipsed since (Chicago’s Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane are likely candidates to finally do it with extensions this summer).
As a result, contenders have been able to keep their cores intact — usually by signing players to long, long deals — and even found ways to add to them. The Kings drafted Drew Doughty, Anze Kopitar, Jonathan Quick and Dustin Brown, and acquired Jeff Carter, Mike Richards and Justin Williams in trades. That formed the backbone of their 2012 championship.
More recent draftees Tanner Pearson, Tyler Toffoli and Alec Martinez have stepped into bigger roles this spring while trade deadline pickup Marian Gaborik has proven to be more than worth the gamble.
That is why this team sits four victories away from another championship. And, much like Chicago and Boston, the Kings don’t look like a franchise that will be looking at a rebuild any time soon. They have a solid foundation.
The end of parity in the NHL, if that is indeed what’s happening, should not be viewed negatively. Marquee franchises drive interest across all sports — both from those cheering for them and against them — and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see a true dynasty again in a 30-team league with limited free agency options.
Chicago probably has the best chance of all, but was reminded about how challenging it will be after seeing its season come to an abrupt end in a tight seven-game Western Conference final against Los Angeles. After that game, Sutter told reporters that his team knew that it would have to go through the Blackhawks to win another title.
That wasn’t the talk of a man who feels that any given team can win in any given year.
The Kings franchise has a come an awful long way in a short amount of time. After waiting 45 years to lift the Stanley Cup for the first time, a sense of satisfaction didn’t take hold.
“Take a run at it again,” Sutter said at the podium on that exultant June night here in 2012. “That’s the next thing.”
Here they are. On command.