After the New York Post reported that there was a recent incident between the Los Angeles Kings players and head coach Darryl Sutter on a recent road trip, Kings GM Dean Lombardi spoke with local media in L.A. to address the issue. He certainly didn’t run from it.
The Post’s Larry Brooks reported this about the Kings in his Saturday Slap Shots column:
Slap Shots has been told by two sources that the Kings locked the door to their locker room following a defeat on the road within the last two weeks so that Sutter could not get in and deliver what the players apparently expected to be another in a series of lectures/tirades.
As the tale was told, after Sutter finally tracked down an arena operative to unlock the door, he was greeted by three heavy waste receptacles lined up as barricade to what had become an empty room.
Lombardi quibbled with the details on the time frame, but did not dispute that the incident happened.
''It’s factually inaccurate,” said of the report Sunday (via Rich Hammond of the Orange County Register) “The timing is wrong. It happened in Tampa (in February), not last week.”
“This was just brought to my attention yesterday, in terms of that part [the garbage cans being used as barricades]. So I guess it’s fair to say there was a little scuffle in Tampa.''
He also sounded fine with what had happened, whatever it may have been.
DL wants players in charge of room, taking over emotion in room. "Maybe the way to do it was, 'We don't need it right now, we've got it."
— Jon Rosen (@lakingsinsider) April 12, 2015
That said, this adds a new and interesting twist to what was probably already going to be an offseason of intense review of the organization. Despite winning a lot of games and two Stanley Cups with mostly this group, the frustration of the way this season went was bound to manifest itself in a variety of ways.
To think back to the love fest between Sutter and his players after celebrating another Cup last year and the subsequent parade and rally, no one could have foreseen this kind of thing happening. But in a tough situation, sometimes extreme measures are taken to try to give a spark.
The Kings won their game in Tampa Bay and rattled off eight consecutive wins following this apparent incident. Enough time has passed since the scrape where it's probably long blown over. These are the kinds of incidents that raise questions about a coach "losing the room," but based on Lombardi's description, this was a one-off thing that didn't really concern him.
It appears doubtful anything more will come of this. Sutter's job is unlikely to be in jeopardy despite the disappointing finish to the season. After all, he has 138-84-39 record and guided the team to three consecutive deep playoff runs with two Stanley Cups. Lombardi has worked hard to keep the Stanley Cup core intact, and you’d have to believe Sutter is a part of that core group, albeit in a different way.
There will definitely be some changes in Los Angeles, however. Most of them could come at the player level, like the possibility of buying out Mike Richards and working with pending free agents on the roster to decide if they should get another deal or not. There’s work to be done, but certainly no need for an overhaul by any means.
