Kings close with a loss and rebuilding begins again

And now for the heavy lifting . . .

The most-important day for the Kings’ franchise to date -- in the most-important off-season, no less -- will be turned over to team president of business operations, Luc Robitaille, who is making the trip to New York for Monday’s NHL draft lottery.

“Why not leave it to a guy named Lucky?” Kings President and General Manager Dean Lombardi said. “You can’t lose sending a guy whose nickname is Lucky. He’s putting his reputation enormously at risk. If he doesn’t win, it would jeopardize 20 years of a nickname.”

Hours after the Kings’ season-ending 4-3 loss to the Ducks on Saturday afternoon at Staples Center, their fortunes took a downward turn. Tampa Bay lost, 4-1, against Atlanta, giving up three third-period goals. The Lightning finished with 71 points.

So it turned out that the Kings’ win Thursday against the Sharks was indeed costly. The Kings also finished with 71 points, but they have one more victory than Tampa Bay, which is the first tiebreaker. Finishing second worst means they won’t pick any lower than third in the NHL Entry Draft at Ottawa on June 20-21.

They still could end up with the No. 1 selection after Monday’s draft lottery.

That could be the first domino of options: Does Lombardi go with forward Steve Stamkos of the Sarnia Sting or defenseman Drew Doughty of the Guelph Storm?

Then they have to decide whether to make qualifying offers to restricted free agents by June 25 to retain their rights. Among the key restricted free agents are forward Patrick O’Sullivan, who had a breakout season of 22 goals and 53 points, defenseman Peter Harrold and goalie Erik Ersberg.

Unrestricted free agents are defensemen Rob Blake, Jon Klemm and Kevin Dallman and forwards Brian Willsie and Jeff Giuliano. Scott Thornton is one as well but this was billed as his last game in the NHL. It’s hard to envision the Kings reconnecting with goalie Dan Cloutier after he torched the organization in an interview with the Vancouver Sun newspaper in March.

“I have no idea. Who knows,” he said. “This year has been a roller-coaster year. It’s one for the record books what I’ve gone through. I certainly proved to myself I can still play in this league. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

“For an organization that keeps saying there’s not a whole lot of good goalies in this organization, I think it’s one of the better. . . . Maybe I’m not in the plans, who knows. I’m not going to start to worry about what’s going to happen.”

The Kings and Cloutier differ in their accounts on how the goaltender was treated. Cloutier, who has one year left on his contract, said he had not spoken with Lombardi since the newspaper interview.

“I was telling the truth,” Cloutier said. “I’m a pretty honest guy. I’m not going to go out of my way to start a war because you’re never going to win a war against a general manager.”

The first day of NHL free agency is July 1, and the Kings can’t afford to have as dismal a showing as last summer when their shopping cart ended up with costly and largely ineffective items. Michal Handzus and Ladislav Nagy, anyone?

But the way Lombardi was talking, it sounded as though the major infusion of talent will be coming from the team’s top minor-league affiliate in Manchester, N.H.

“I do think it’s fair to say we’ll get four to five players out of Manchester this year,” he said. “It’s a pretty good class. Some of them got a taste here. It’s a fairly reasonable guesstimate.”

Jeff Solomon, the team’s directory of hockey operations and legal affairs, said that the workload won’t be quite the way it was last summer when he estimated they had to sign about 16 players to bolster the entire farm system.

“You’ll never see that again,” he said. “We turned over our entire infrastructure. I think we’ve got the foundation in place.”

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lisa.dillman@latimes.com