Trade Season!

It’s the point of the season where the Kings begin shopping around for a player to give them a much needed boost as the free agents they signed the summer prior didn’t do too much. 2016 had Christian Ehrhoff who got signed and dumped for Rob Scuderi. 2014 had the newly acquired Matt Frattin get traded laughably for Marian Gaborik. 2013 had Keaton Ellerby playing over Alec Martinez and then, seeing as that wasn’t insane enough, put Robyn Regehr on the roster. 2012 saw newbies Ethan Moreau and Trent Hunter flame out, while Simon Gagne died or something and the Kings got a disgruntled (now MVP worthy) Jeff Carter. 2011 employed Marco Sturm? Remember that? Fucking weird. Anyway, he got replaced by Dustin Penner (who I also forgot about). 2010 brought in Jeff Halpern (ugh) and Freddy Modin (yay) mostly because the team was young and making their first playoff push in like a decade and they sucked. 2015 was an outright fiasco.

This year has free agent struggle boys Teddy Purcell and Tom Gilbert. So the Kings want firepower up front, which makes sense seeing as the only guy scoring is Carter (and the trio of Tanner Pearson, Tyler Toffoli, and Martinez in overtime only though). Sure, Anze Kopitar is due, and Marian Gaborik seems to be coming around, but it’s slim pickings.

Now, they could just call up Purcell and give him another crack. He was hurt to start the season, played bottom line minutes, and saw like four games before getting shuttled to Ontario. But the Kings don’t like being normal (they did healthy scratch Gaborik this season after all) and will probably just try to trade for someone.

Again, this is a trend. So rumors from that Mayor guy, who’s admittedly only a few steps up from a hockey forum contributor, say that the Kings are in on the captain of the Avalanche Gabriel Landeskog. This would be a hell of a feat, seeing as Landeskog is only 24, has a reasonable cap hit around 5.5 million per year for 5 years left, and isn’t Dustin Penner.

But the Kings simply don’t have the cap space to take him unless they dump another two million at least. Dwight King and Trevor Lewis fit that bill, but there’s no way that even the Avs are stupid enough to do that deal, and doesn’t equate if/when Jonathan Quick returns. Which is why Mister Mayor Man suggested Alec Martinez would be part of the deal.

Fuck

that

shit.

Besides me not wanting to have go buy another damn hockey jersey, there’s some real issues with this. You can deplete your defense, which is far and away your strongest attribute right now, ridding your team of your consistent top four right side guy for a guy who has fewer goals than Rene Bourque. In the short run it doesn’t make much sense. Who takes that spot? Greene or Gilbert? Does Muzzin or McNabb slide over to the right? McNabb is still easing into more minutes, and Muzzin has been up and down all year and that’s being polite. Long term...same issue. If Colin Miller was around, that’s a different story but I digress. SHOULDA JUST KEPT FREAKIN JUSTIN WILLIAMS. Taking a stab for a piece vs remodeling your team makes more sense. Hell, Jarome Iginla can’t be worth that much and Lombardi and Sutter love that guy.

Or the Kings can call up Purcell ¯\_(ツ)_/¯