Kings Gameday: El Scud

The Kings have been tinkering with their roster a bunch following the 2015 fuck-bam-boozle. There was the Milan Lucic deal, the Mike Richards abandonment, and most recently the Luke Schenn and Vincent Lecavalier reclamation project. For the most part, it's been working alright. A large part of that you could probably just attribute to the team busting their collective asses a little bit more in the regular season. However, the tinkering continues.

Which brings us to the trade deadline. The Kings aren't a perfectly constructed team. The bottom six forwards are questionable, and the defense has some huge questions regarding the the sixth and seventh spots. Christian Ehrhoff fucked up, Sutter hates AHL talent, and Jamie McBain is sort of...I don't know really. It's Jamie McBain. Add the Marian Gaborik long term knee injury and there's a few places that could use touching up.

So the Kings made a move.

Christian Ehrhoff couldn't cut it on the NHL roster and according to regular viewers of the Ontario Reign, he looked over it. So he got dealt, and everyone was cool with that. Except the return...

I don't hate Rob Scuderi. He helped the Kings out of the dark ages, won a Cup with them, and his face getting turned into hamburger was instrumental in that happening. But that was 2012.

He was declining a bit then, and 2013 came and made it even more evident he was toast. He couldn't hang with Drew Doughty on the top pair, he was a total liability, and him hitting free agency occurred one year too late for Los Angeles. Having the Penguins go and throw a ton of money at him seemed like a mistake, despite their own past success with him too. Now we have the Kings making that same mistake, albeit at a lower cost.

Scuds burnt out with the Penguins who loved him. Their defense, which is mediocre at best, saw him as expendable. They dumped him to Chicago, who quickly threw him to the AHL after a short stint. Now it's the Kings' turn. The difference being that the Kings have three very good defensemen, McNabb who is pretty solid, Schenn who isn't bad as a sixth man, and McBain who's...well, still Jamie McBain. It was a (mostly) reliable five and McBain.

Scuderi doesn't exactly fit either. He's slow, and defense specific, and the Kings already have McNabb who is better all around now. If the Kings had an injury and needed to be using McBain more...maybe it makes sense to pair him there? Otherwise Scuderi is a seventh defenseman who doesn't slot in anywhere practical really and is a glorified mascot. Which brings me to El Cid.

Back in Medieval Spain, El Cid was more or less a kickass warrior/general/soccer player (citation needed). He won all sorts of battles, was pretty much beloved, and was a very important guy blah blah blah. However, he wound up dead during a siege. Someone had a brilliant idea to throw him into his armor and trot him out on his horse, and convince folks that he was alive. It was like Braveheart met Weekend at Bernie's. Rumor has it that it inspired the soldiers and they fought back the siege and had an amazing house party.

Back to Scuderi...Well, you can probably see where I am going with this. He was once good. He's useless now. Except for the memories of the good times with him, and what he represents to the organization, there is nothing he can really provide. He's thrown in his Kings armor, thrown on the roster, trots around the locker-room, and we all go "ah yeah we won with him he was such a great guy for us". The problem being he is dead.

And now he is lining up alongside Brayden McNabb.

Prediction: I'm getting fucking wasted.