Moving down the list, we continue our series dissecting The Athletic's fan poll determining fan confidence in NHL front office's where the Los Angeles Kings ranked 31st.
We've already looked at roster building and visions, now we're moving to draft and development.
Related:
I want to make the caveat that I don't like combining drafting and developing into one category. They're two separate things handled by different departments within the organization and their success shouldn't be determined together.
However, that's how The Athletic has it. I get why, it's easy, but not ideal.
Since taking over in 2017, the Rob Blake-led Kings have drafted 52 players, 18 of which came in the first two rounds of the draft.
We'll use those 52 players to judge Blake's drafting and development, you could argue players drafted a few years before should fall under developing for Blake but that gets too complicated.
Using that 2017 cutoff, let's look at next season's roster. Akil Thomas Alex Laferriere, Alex Turcotte, Brandt Clarke, Jordan Spence and Quinton Byfield are all expected to be NHL regulars next season with Arthur Kaliyev and Samuel Fagemo having a chance to make the team.
Of that group, Anderson, Byfield, one of Clarke and Spence, and Laferriere are expected to play a significant role on that team.
It's fair to exclude the last two drafts when looking at help for next season, so out of 43 picks (2017-22), the Kings have extracted six full-time NHLers and four playing a significant role for their team.
If we want to be generous we can bump that to eight and 10 if we include Gabe Vilardi and Brock Faber being significant players for other teams.
It isn't a terrible return but isn't great either when you factor in how many of those players were selected in the top two rounds.
Amongst that group of 14 players, there's a realistic world where Byfield is the only player in a top-six or top-four role. That's a bad return. Again, you can argue for three players if we include Vilardi and Faber.
This is where I think we need to separate drafting and developing. Is the lack of impact from those players the fault of the scouting department or development staff?
Let's get even more complicated here, I think it's the fault of neither.
Where the Kings have really stumbled in their use of young players is in graduating them into impactful NHL players which falls on the NHL coaching staff and management.
The Kings have drafted, and to an extent, developed players well, but at that final hurdle they've fallen on their face.
If you really want to get into the weeds, you can argue the Kings simply haven't drafted good enough players or haven't developed them into good enough players to warrant significant spots in the lineup.
However, I will always go back to this article at The Athletic examining why the Dallas Stars have had so much success drafting and developing.
In short, they've shown a lot of trust in young players and given their high draft picks chances to thrive in more natural roles.
The Kings have not. Their shift towards competing in the short-term in 2021 began the process of blocking prospects and not giving them the right opportunities to thrive and that's where they've failed.
This is another example of why I don't like labeling it as "drafting and developing", the Kings have drafted and developed fine. This is more of a failing in the two previous areas, vision and roster building.
The mistakes made in those two areas created this issue of minimal high-impact players from Blake's drafts.
If the Kings start utilizing young players better at the NHL level, and abandon Todd McLellan's "money to extract from the ATM" method which gives veteran players far more room for error than young players, their draft success will start moving in the right direction.
It's fair to put the blame on Blake here and give him a D- in this poll, but it's important to separate that issue from the Kings' scouting and developing departments.
If there's one area this organization does well, it's drafting and developing, even if that's hurt by management and coaching decisions at the NHL level.