Kings of the bungle

By Chris Foster

Jan. 26, 2007 12 AM PT

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Times Staff Writer

Marc Saenz was captivated by Kings hockey when an ice age gripped Los Angeles. It was spring 1993 and the franchise was sizzling.

He hung on every slap shot as Wayne Gretzky’s Kings plowed through the playoffs, only to have their Stanley Cup hopes derailed by a crooked stick.

The Kings, never so close before, have not been close since.

“The hardest thing about being a Kings fan is always waiting until next year,” said Saenz, who lives in Temple City. “And the next year after that. And the next year after that.”

This season marks 40 years of wandering in the NHL wilderness for the Kings, whose current 16-28-6 record puts them at the bottom of the Western Conference and 29th among 30 teams. The Kings, in fact, have played more games without winning the Cup than any other NHL team.

That giddy stretch in 1993, when the Kings reached the Cup finals, is the only time they advanced past the second round.

In four decades, the franchise has gone from “win now” to “youth movement” to “win now” and back again.

Last season, Tim Leiweke, who oversees the Kings for parent company AEG, all but predicted an end to the team’s wandering.

The lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season was over, and the new collective bargaining agreement with its salary cap, Leiweke said, would level the playing field and allow the Kings to compete with the elite teams who had bankrolled success.

“We have waited five years for this season,” he said.

His words would come to haunt him, because the Kings’ second-half collapse left them 10th in the conference, prompting another housecleaning.

In looking back, Leiweke now regrets the path AEG took after buying the bankrupt club in 1995.

“If we would have absolutely reeked the first couple years,” he said, “we’d be winning now.

“It was L.A. and we tried to build on the fly,” he added. “If we had to do it all over, it would have probably been better to be awful for two or three years and had top draft picks instead of being competitive and getting the 10th or 11th or 15th pick.”

Meanwhile, the team’s small but fanatical fan base collectively tapped their toes and closed the checkbook this season. Ticket sales have hit a five-year low.

The Kings have six announced sellouts. Last season, they sold out 26 of their 41 home games.

One scalper, who asked not to be identified, said recently, “When a bad team is in town, I can’t give tickets away.”

Overall, there have been eight general managers, 21 head coaches, 527 players and one constant.

“Nothing ever seems to come to fruition,” Saenz said.

The brightest moment, of course, came in those ’93 finals. Owner Bruce McNall’s blueprint to win the Stanley Cup with his checkbook, which included acquiring Wayne Gretzky in a 1988 trade, seemed to be working.

The Kings held a 1-0 lead in the series against the Montreal Canadiens. But late in the third period of Game 2, Marty McSorley was given a penalty for using an illegal stick. Montreal scored on the power play to tie the score, won the game in overtime and swept the next three.

McNall’s dream then turned into a financial nightmare. He had spent more money than he had and eventually was sentenced to prison for his admitted role in a scheme to defraud banks, a securities firm and the Kings of more than $236 million.

He was forced to sell the club. Jeffrey Sudikoff and Joe Cohen became the new owners, but they too were short of money. The club fell into bankruptcy until AEG rescued it.

“I tried to bring pizazz to the game,” said McNall, who regularly attends games and is an unofficial ambassador for the team. “There is some misconception that if you put a good team out there, people will come. This is L.A. You need an identity. We had movie stars and pretty girls coming into the Forum Club after games, mingling with the fans. It was like a nightclub.”

Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the Lakers and the Washington Redskins, also saw great potential when he paid $2 million for the new franchise in 1966.

“The NHL was trying to make a statement that it was more than just a regional league,” said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.

“It’s the same reason that NASCAR is running races in Southern California and is trying to build a track in the Northwest. They were establishing a national footprint that seems the hallmark of being a major sport. The NHL was considered part of the big four, which was remarkable given the reality of the business the last 10 to 15 years.”

Cooke did things his way.

“Mr. Cooke was a pretty dominant guy,” said Bob Berry, a former player and coach with the Kings. But “there was so much transition in management and I don’t think there was any long-term plan.”

There were flashes of greatness, though:

* Rogie Vachon, acquired in a trade with Montreal in 1971, was among the NHL’s best goaltenders. His six seasons with the Kings marked one of the few times the team’s goaltender situation was stable.

* Butch Goring and Mike Murphy were marquee players who produced success in the 1970s, including a franchise-best 105 points in the 1974-75 season.

* Marcel Dionne, acquired in a 1975 blockbuster trade, was the team’s first superstar and is the only Hall of Famer pictured in a Kings uniform. He was teamed with Dave Taylor and Charlie Simmer in 1979, creating the Triple Crown Line that produced buckets of goals and plenty of roll-the-tape highlights.

Still, the Kings won only four playoff series in the first 15 seasons. Berry, who coached the team from 1978 to 1981, learned a hard lesson. “I found out that to be successful, you had to not only be good from the coach on down,” he said, “you had to be good from the coach on up.”

At the top was Cooke.

“Cooke’s philosophy, when he was running it, is you could trade first-round picks,” said Berry, who is back with the team this season as a pro scout.

In 1968, the Kings sent two first-round picks to Montreal for goaltender prospect Gerry Desjardins, who was off the Kings’ roster in less than two years. The Canadiens used one of those picks to take Steve Shutt, who is now in the Hall of Fame.

It was the start of a trend.

Defenseman Ray Bourque, forward Reggie Leach, defenseman Phil Housley, goaltender Tom Barrasso and forward Claude Lemieux -- a group that has eight Stanley Cups among them -- were taken by teams that held Kings draft picks. In return, L.A. got Ron Grahame, Skip Krake, Jerry Korab, Rick Martin and Rick Chartraw.

“One year, we didn’t draft until the fifth round,” Berry said. “When it finally came to our turn, everyone stood up and started clapping for us.”

In 1984, the Kings passed on Brett Hull, who was taken by the Calgary Flames in the fifth round. While 28 other teams made the same mistake, the Kings chose Tom Glavine in the fourth round. Hull probably is headed to the Hockey Hall of Fame, while Glavine, now with the New York Mets, probably is headed to Cooperstown.

When AEG pulled the club out of Chapter 11 with a $113-million investment, it had a mess on its hands. “The difficult part is we did not just inherit a team that was bankrupt financially, it was bankrupt of hockey assets,” Leiweke said. “We had nothing, no draft picks, no kids in the system, no scouts.”

The situation improved but only slightly. Of the 11 first-round draft picks the Kings have had since 2000, only three are with the team.

The Kings also have allowed top players to leave either through trade or free agency. Since AEG took over, Luc Robitaille, Rob Blake, Steve Duchesne and Darryl Sydor had to go elsewhere to win the Cup.

Even Dionne by 1987 had grown weary of the team’s lack of success after 12 years and pushed Vachon, then general manager, to improve the roster or trade him. Dionne was sent packing to the New York Rangers.

“The Kings have always seemed to act like a small market even though they’re in a big city,” said a former executive for an NHL team, who asked not to be identified.

This season, the Kings are virtually assured of missing the playoffs again, although the marketing campaign does promise the team will “Play Hard.”

“Everyone in my section makes fun of that,” said Michael Carey, a 43-year-old Santa Monica resident and former season ticket-holder who reduced his ticket purchases to mini-plans two years ago. “In L.A., you have to make the playoffs to keep the fans happy. If you don’t, fans find it hard to renew their tickets.”

McNall agrees.

“Playing for tomorrow is a cop-out,” he said.

Fans, however, clung to the “next year” mantra.

“It’s a commitment to something you love,” said Matt Smith, a 34-year-old Los Angeles resident who has been going to Kings games since he was 7. “Then you lose, year after year, while giving them your money. It’s so frustrating.”

The Kings, though, have been good for AEG owner Philip Anschutz, who occasionally attends games. Most important, the team gave his company a foothold to build in the Los Angeles market.

Michael Ozanian, senior editor of Forbes, when asked recently whether New York could support three teams, was quoted as saying that real estate is at the heart of franchise deals and cited the Kings as an example.

“Anschutz really bought that team not because he could make money, with the economics of hockey, but because he wanted to build the Staples Center and that was the first step,” Ozanian said.

The Home Depot Center and Toyota Training Center followed. And now a billion-dollar entertainment district is being constructed outside Staples.

Inside, the Kings need to be reconstructed but the salary cap leaves little margin for error, especially in a glutted sports market.

“I think the Kings played a role in increasing the visibility of the sport, by having the L.A. market as part of the league in an era when it was not all about TV ratings,” Swangard said. “But it is increasingly hard to be competing in a big market when you haven’t established a stronger market presence. If you’re not the top one or two teams, the market isn’t as lucrative.”

AEG’s interest in the Kings remains strong, Leiweke said, pointing to the millions spent on building and later refurbishing the training center and buying an American Hockey League franchise. But with the Galaxy’s signing of soccer legend David Beckham, some fans suspect that the Kings have been eclipsed in the AEG hierarchy.

“Soccer has the opportunity to break into the top three or four sports in the United States,” Leiweke said. “That’s not a negative statement about the Kings. There is not a more passionate person about the Kings than me.”

But, he said, “There is an opportunity to grow soccer. Hockey, unfortunately, has gone the other way in terms of ratings and coverage. We have our work cut out for us.”

Dean Lombardi, who built the San Jose Sharks into a competitive franchise, was hired as general manager last spring. He presented Anschutz and Leiweke with three plans. One of those -- a total reconstruction of the franchise -- was rejected as potentially too damaging to the season-ticket base.

A request to interview Anschutz for this story was declined.

Further frustrating fans is the success of the Anaheim Ducks, who came into existence in 1993 and reached the Western Conference finals twice in three seasons. This season, they are among the NHL’s elite teams.

“The Kings need to explain their vision better,” Carey said. “If they had said, ‘We’re rebuilding, we’re tearing this down, be patient and we’re reducing season-ticket prices.’ To me, that would be a better way to market the team than ‘Play Hard.’ There is too much blind faith being asked.”

Lombardi is realistic.

“Ultimately, it’s up to what your ownership wants to do,” he said. “Do you want to build a team that just makes it in there every year, or do you want to try to win it all? Both are right.”

To that end, Lombardi has acquired or drafted these top prospects: defenseman Jack Johnson, forwards Patrick O’Sullivan and Trevor Lewis and goaltender Jonathan Bernier.

But Kings fans have been this route before too. In the mid-1990s, goaltender Jamie Storr and defenseman Aki Berg were called the cornerstones for a bright future. Each fizzled.

Sally Watt, a fan since 1982 who lives in Redondo Beach, is doubtful. “Leiweke is the one who promised the fans that once Staples Center was built, the money would be rolling in and there would be no reason the Stanley Cup wouldn’t be here,” she said. “We all know how well that ended for us.”

Kings executives acknowledge they are concerned about flagging attendance.

“The fact is fans are frustrated, and I don’t blame them,” Leiweke said. “But this is not from lack of commitment or love of hockey on our side.”

The numbers, however, may be worse since teams are required only to announce tickets distributed. Counted in the total are those who get in for free and those who hold season tickets for all events at Staples, whether or not they attend Kings games.

The Kings have offered cut-rate tickets to put bodies in the building. Several fans said that blocks of free tickets have been offered. And for at least one game, a team representative offered free tickets on myspace.com.

A team spokesman said free tickets are used in promotions, advertising deals and resolving customer service issues and conceded that “comps are up slightly this year, but nothing major.”

In interviews with dozens of fans, one thing was clear: free tickets won’t end their anger.

“For what one beer costs at Staples Center, I could get a 12-pack of Old Milwaukee,” Smith said. “The reality is, how long are you going to go without at least making the playoffs? I gave up my season ticket three years ago. If I go now, it’s because someone gives me a ticket.”

Still, Smith shows up.

Seanz has a limit, however.

“I’ll stop being a hockey fan,” he said, “if the Ducks win the Stanley Cup before we win it.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

How they rate

Where the Kings have finished in the standings:

* First place...One time (1990-91)

* Second...10 times

* Third...Eight times

* Fourth...Eight times

* Fifth...Six times