Kings Wearing the Dunce Caps Particularly Well

We don’t have many teams left in Los Angeles, but we do have this hockey team, the Kings.

They have no coach. They can’t meet their payroll without bumming money off the guy who owns the basketball team that plays in the same building. They leech off their own fans, forcing them to pay in advance for a playoff series that never happens, then delaying their refunds until the customers aren’t sure what action to take short of hiring Johnnie Cochran.

A bankruptcy trustee controls 28% of the team. The league is asked to lend the Kings something like $9 million. A bank holding a $50-million lien on the team’s assets scuttles the loan, forcing the Kings to default.

They can’t pay their top player. They lay off employees who make a fraction of what the players make. The former owner may end up behind bars. The current owners soon may surrender the team to new owners. The Kings are a flesh-and-blood Monopoly board of people being told to sell, pay or go directly to jail.

As for personnel decisions, the Kings keep skating around with their heads up their helmets.

They trade Marty McSorley for a few weeks, then get him back. They trade Luc Robitaille in his prime for a guy with a bad back. They trade Paul Coffey for someone younger. They trade Alex Zhitnik for someone older. The someone older stays for a few weeks, loses nearly every game he plays, then leaves town.

They hire a coach who has never been an NHL coach. They let him dismantle the club, piece by piece, until it is shaped in the image he likes. Then they fire him.

No replacement is available, so a guy from the front office takes over as coach. No replacement is hired months later, so the Kings pick players in the NHL draft without knowing what sort of players their next coach would prefer.

They keep their top draft choice rather than trading it for an established player, because they are building for the future. Yet they trade next year’s top draft choice for an established player, because they want to win now, not later.

Larry Robinson says he would rather coach hockey in Florida than coach a team with this much trouble, a team for which he used to play.

Everything the Kings do is an exercise in futility. Even that appearance in the Stanley Cup was a mirage that fooled everybody into believing things were good, when in fact that was a third-place team that caught a wave over a few weeks.

Thinking about ice hockey in July isn’t a normal thing to do in Los Angeles, but we are running out of teams here and need to worry about the ones we have left. We have three teams here, the Kings, Clippers and Angels, who have been competing for decades without a single championship. And people here mock Cleveland.

We watch the things the Kings do and all we can do is blink. They couldn’t even dominate the Mighty Ducks. Right out of their eggs, the Ducks played the Kings on an equal basis. The King players should have returned their pay, assuming they were paid.

Their methods reek of madness. The one area not in need of emergency help was in goal, where Kelly Hrudey had a few good years left. So, the Kings draft a kid goaltender. OK. Kid’s a prospect. Except they throw him right into the crease. OK. Kid needs experience. Except then they trade for Grant Fuhr, a golden oldie goalie whose best saves are behind him.

And they trade Zhitnik, just as they traded Coffey, just as they traded McSorley, when the very thing this team needed most was defensemen. How do they make these deals? By throwing darts? By cutting cards? Last man out of the shower gets traded to Pittsburgh or Buffalo?

And then people are supposed to buy season tickets to a team that probably is already sending out applications for playoff tickets. I’d rather buy tickets to the L.A. Ice Dogs, and I’m not even sure they play hockey.

While I feel for Wayne Gretzky, who deserves better, he should do himself and everyone a favor and bail out of here. Request a trade. Go for one more Cup before it’s too late. Rangers, Blues, Red Wings, somewhere. At least the Kings could get some cash for him, pay some bills. Time to start over, boys.

This is a team in utter and total disarray. The ex-wife of the Kings’ former owner recently held a yard sale, selling much of what she owns. That is exactly what this whole team should do.