Seriously, the Kings Really Want to Win Now

At the end of every hockey season since 2000, Tim Leiweke has stood in front of frustrated season-seat holders and vowed to spend money and bring a winner to L.A. Now he has finally admitted that they had no intention of doing so and were instead planning for the eventual lockout which finally happened last year.

In exchange for the tens of thousands of dollars I spent on tickets those years when King ownership was unconcerned with icing a winning team, AEG is providing a 5% rebate of a couple hundred dollars and free tickets to a meaningless exhibition game to be back in my good graces.

Sorry, Tim, you are a master salesman and well-suited to selling ice in our little desert, yet I am no longer willing to line up and drink your Kool-Aid.

Jamie Buckley

Westchester

I find it amusing that Tim Leiweke states that with the new deal for the NHL, “teams can’t buy a Stanley Cup anymore.”

Has he been watching hockey at all the last few years? Tampa Bay? Calgary? Weren’t their payrolls lower than the Kings’? And on the opposite end of it, the New York Rangers! How did they do in “buying” the cup? Hockey is unlike any other spot in that money can’t guarantee a cup. Its about the team, the system, and the chemistry.

The Kings’ first step toward a Stanley Cup this year with the new rule changes to open up the game? Sign one of the slowest and oldest guys in the league. Welcome back Luc. Wasn’t Gordie Howe available?

Steven Parks

Burbank

As a die-hard NHL fan, my stomach churns at the thought of a shootout to settle tie games. What’s next in the NBA, a game of H-O-R-S-E after four quarters?

Jeff Prescott

La Jolla

With all the hoopla over Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins being the next Wayne Gretzky, I guess we in L.A. will just have to read about it in the L.A. Times. The Ducks’ new and improved schedule includes no home games with Pittsburgh, or for that matter with the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins, New Jersey Devils, Toronto or Montreal. Instead we get to see Vancouver, Carolina and Nashville. I can hardly restrain my excitement.

Neil Campbell

Huntington Beach