Can Rob Blake bring 'offensive touch' to LA Kings?

LOS ANGELES – New Los Angeles Kings general manager Rob Blake understands his team’s biggest deficiency and what needs to be his first order of business as he tries to guide the organization back to Stanley Cup contention.

“We don’t score,” Blake said at a news conference introducing him as the team’s GM, replacing Dean Lombardi who was fired a day earlier. “It has been that way this year. There needs to be some emphasis on how we’re going to do that and there’s time now, through this offseason, to come up with those different philosophies.”

Blake and fellow team legend Luc Robitaille, who was promoted to oversee hockey operations along with his previous role of working on the business side of the Kings, both harped on how they have the right core in place to still win and that a new philosophy is mostly what they need. Under Lombardi and former coach Darryl Sutter, who was also let go Monday, Los Angeles formed a strong defensive identity that won two Stanley Cups. But in the past few years as the NHL sped up, the Kings stayed sluggish and fell behind, missing the playoffs two of the last three seasons.

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“The game changed the last couple of years, right? All these young kids coming in and flying around and blowing the zone, we had a hard time keeping up with them,” Kings forward Jeff Carter said.

In the three seasons after their 2014 Stanley Cup win, Los Angeles scored 2.60 goals per-game, which ranked 20th in the NHL during that timespan, and allowed 2.40 per-game, which ranked second over that stretch. This season the Kings’ scored 2.43 goals per-game, which ranked 25th and allowed 2.45, which ranked fifth.

Los Angeles’ offensive struggles weren’t a big deal when the Kings were winning championships but this lack of balance became an issue when Los Angeles fell off. During Sutter’s years with the Kings, the team scored 2.53 goals per-game and allowed 2.28.

“Our core defensive structure, we need to keep that but at the same time we have to find ways to make it more offensive and not lose that defensive structure so whoever we bring in, they need to help bring in more offense to our game,” Los Angeles defenseman Drew Doughty said. “That’s just the bottom line and whether that’s through different systems or through letting the players basically do what they want to do and try to make riskier plays, there’s different ways to do it but whoever they do bring in definitely needs to bring an offensive touch to our team.”

It’s unclear whether Blake, the team’s former assistant general manager, can accomplish this goal in just one offseason. If the issue was just Sutter then a coaching change could do the trick, but if the Kings just don’t have the personnel to play with more pace then change could take longer.

“It’s not from I would say a lack of talent,” Blake said. “If you took individual skill, we have lots of that. Collectively we have to find a way to create more offense and believe me, they’ve been trying. It’s not like they just said ‘we’re not going to try to do this.’ But we need to take a real hard look at all the different things that go into it – structure wise, system wise, player wise and all that over the summer and come up with a game-plan that will open that up for these players.”

Blake said he prefers a bench boss with NHL experience but didn’t give a lot of details on where he was in the process to find Sutter’s replacement. Overall, Kings players liked what they heard from Blake in regards to pumping up the team’s offense and were hopeful a new coach will accomplish a higher tempo game-plan.

“Puts a smile on my face, yeah,” Carter said.

Though the Kings say they still believe in their core they need to make improvements in other areas to their team, which could prove tough for Blake based off the organization’s salary structure.

The $10.75 million combined locked into 32-year-old Dustin Brown and 35-year-old Gaborik have made it difficult for Los Angeles to make changes in the past. Blake acknowledged he needs to figure out how to deal with LA’s cap situation so he can better build the team in his image.

“The cap implications are well known on all clubs and everything. Like I said, there’s so much behind the scenes that goes into it,” Blake said. “(Vice president of hockey operations and legal affairs) Jeff Solomon is a tremendous influence on this organization in that aspect and he runs us through daily things. There’s a lot of things we have to look at over the next little while, but yes, salary cap implications definitely weigh in that.”

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Though the last couple of days have been about change and moving forward, Blake said he hoped to keep a lot of the good parts that came from the tenures of Lombardi and Sutter. Los Angeles is one of three teams to win multiple Cups since the 2004-05 lockout and Lombardi and Sutter were a big reason why. They may have faltered in recent years, but that doesn’t change what they accomplished.

“The culture is in place and I respect that culture 100 percent. It’s a culture that you know has success,” Blake said. “Sometimes you can come into maybe an organization and they haven’t won and they say they have this culture and that, but it has been proven here. Like I said, the core players like (Kopitar) and Drew and Jeff – they’ve been molded with that culture. It’s not coming out of them, so we’ll build on that.”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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