No easy solutions in attempt to reinforce goaltending, via Lombardi

So, your team’s star goaltender is injured long-term, and you’re looking for someone capable of holding the fort until he returns in mid-February. It’s as simple as getting on the phone, making calls, swinging a deal and heading home from work, right?

No, that’s not really how it works. Dean Lombardi has a list of goaltenders and teams that could be a potential match in a trade. It is not a who’s who list of starting netminders. It’s a list of players with bad contracts, players who are underperforming, players who are third string goaltenders. It is a list free of palatable number one, 1-A or 1-B goalies.

Furthermore, the Kings have extremely limited cap space and would have a difficult time squeezing in even a player who earns minimal money. The team hasn’t confirmed that Jonathan Quick has been placed on long-term injured reserve, but because of their movement to bring up Rob Scuderi in late October before assigning him back to Ontario in an effort to maximize the benefits of the mechanism that allows teams to spend over the salary cap when a player is out long-term, it’s been accepted as fact across the league that they are currently recouping the benefits of having placed Quick on LTIR. So while CapFriendly may list over eight-million dollars of current cap space, should Quick return in the second half of the season, that available cap space plummets. In terms of “projected cap space” (the projected amount of expected cap space at the end of the season), according to CapFriendly, Los Angeles actually has closer to $1.5-million available, and more space would have to be set aside for other injuries or needs that arise during the season.

Furthermore, there is the expansion draft. Los Angeles may protect either seven forwards, three defensemen and a goalie or eight skaters and a goalie, and all teams must expose at least one goalie under contract for 2017-18 (more expansion draft tools and information is available here).

“Do your homework and say, ‘[target] this [goalie],’ and then you go, ‘well, is it really practical?’ and then you can maybe see one or two guys, and then, ‘OK, does this [GM] want to tango?’” Dean Lombardi said. “I mean, it’s almost as bad as like you see everybody say – they all say – ‘I’m looking for a defenseman, a top-four defenseman.’ Good luck.”

These are not factors unique to the Los Angeles Kings. These are factors that have brought the trade market to a virtual halt. The salary cap’s growth has slowed in recent years, and teams do not want to bring in players that could be claimed in an expansion draft. Only four players of the 10 completed trades since the start of October are currently in the NHL: St. Louis’ Nail Yakupov, Ottawa’s Mike Condon, Anaheim’s Logan Shaw and Arizona’s Peter Holland.

Condon, who drew the start in net for Ottawa against Los Angeles on Saturday, could have been an option, but the Kings, who are loathe to sacrifice the future for the present after trading away draft picks and prospects in recent seasons, did not consummate a deal as Ottawa exchanged a fifth round draft pick with Pittsburgh.

“Right now you’d say, ‘OK, are we at the point where we’ve got to make the other team an offer they can’t refuse?’” Lombardi said. “So if you’re going to debate this right now, in that you’re saying we kind of went over … what’s available and everything else, well, you could easily go to the other side and say ‘well everything has a price,’ so throw the kitchen sink at it.’ I’m not at that point. … If I had a bunch of 35-year-olds in there or something or I was going to lose everybody to the cap or something like that, even then it’s not really smart for the franchise.”

“When you’re in the mode of ‘gotta-do-something’, it usually means just that – make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse. So, if you want to debate both sides, that’s kind of a bit of a philosophy thing. You’re trying to do the smart thing – What’s available? Is it really an upgrade?”

The ‘make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse’ mindset isn’t one that leads many teams to success and is “usually going to end up being an offer you wish they did [refuse],” Lombardi said.

“The other thing too about this team, don’t forget, these guys, you’ve got your top players moving into leadership roles and this isn’t a team that’s going to blow up next year. I’m not about to [trade] three first-rounders for a 1A [goalie].”

While there are 1-A and 1-B goalies with palatable cap hits that might seem like good fits – look at the success experienced by players such as Antti Raanta and Scott Darling this season – their teams do not want to trade them away out of caution that their top goaltender goes down or hits a rough stretch, which is common.

“You’re almost going down to the third man on the depth chart when you’re talking to a lot of these teams and then you also have the issue too, that if you highlight a certain guy, then you’ve got the realization, number one: you’ve got a number one goalie coming back, [and] two: with expansion coming, if he is a top guy you’re going to lose him, so how much are you going to give up for a two-month asset? To be honest with you, there hasn’t even been that type of player in play and now you’re back to, ‘I don’t know, let’s try [Anders] Lindback’ (who the team previously signed to an AHL PTO). You see Toronto trying to with the guy up there now [Karri Ramo]. It’s like back-up quarterbacks, I guess. I mean, you lose a quarterback and it’s tough.”

While Tuesday’s second period collapse in Buffalo was “tough,” as Lombardi said understatedly, the team is still tied for the second Wild Card spot entering play Thursday and has games in hand on the divisional teams above them in the standings. The Pacific Division is also competitive, in the sense that there was also competition to earn a spot on the 2016 Rutgers football team.

The team’s concentration has been to remain in the mix of the teams able to make a bid for a playoff spot without falling out of the pack, and by averaging three goals per game over their last 18, they’ve done that – thus far.

“There’s a difference between gaining ground and maybe you don’t want to give as much ground until you can get your act together,” Lombardi said. “I don’t want to use war analogies, but there is something like, ‘OK, hold your ground, hold your ground, and then go.’ Right now when you lose top players you’ve got to hold your ground. I think I look at it the other way, to stay in it, stay in it, and then you’ll make your charge.”

“Any team that’s going to lose top players, but when I talked to Montreal, when I talked to Berge (Marc Bergevin) about this with what happened in Montreal last year, you’d think he was worried about gaining ground? I mean, it was like ‘hold [your ground],’ and then it was obvious they couldn’t. And then it slid like an avalanche downhill, so I’m looking at it like that. OK, keep in there, stay in there, it’s a different challenge than being down 3-0 in the playoffs, a different challenge, but you’ve been through things like this before. Considering what happened there in Montreal last year, you give these guys a lot of credit because everybody knows that’s not unusual what happened there [with Carey Price’s injury], when a guy at that level goes down and the impact that has on everybody, and to [Peter] Budaj’s credit and them, the fact that we’re holding ground is pretty good compared to that.”

As recently as the 2012-13 season, Los Angeles’ goaltending pipeline may have been the richest in the league. Jonathan Bernier backed up Jonathan Quick, and goaltenders like Martin Jones and J-F Berube were incubating in the minor leagues. Eventually, after Jones made an NHL impact, the Kings did not have enough money to retain him, and there was Frank Seravalli’s report that San Jose was on the verge of making an offer sheet on Jones that Los Angeles would not be able to match. His inclusion in the trade for Milan Lucic was the result that, as Lombardi said, “we were going to lose the goalie and it was one way out of it” for a player in Lucic that Lombardi said “was a special player.”

The team also lost Berube to the New York Islanders through waivers, and the club’s top goaltending prospect, Patrik Bartosak, was arrested in 2015 on a domestic violence incident and is no longer a part of the organization.

So, now, the team must look outside of the organization for help, and there are neither easy answers nor quick fixes.