The Los Angeles Kings recently rated near-bottom of the league in The Athletic's front office confidence rankings.
A poll of fans to determine how local and national fans feel about each team's front office.
The Kings came in at 31st with an overall D- score.
No team saw a bigger drop-off than the Kings, who've lost 92% of fan confidence according to this pool.
Teams were graded in six areas, roster building, cap management, draft and development, trading, free agency and vision.
We'll touch on all of these at some point, but today, we'll focus on "vision".
This quote from a fan sums it up perfectly.
"Strategy was always to build around what was left from the championship teams. It hasn’t worked and now we are stuck in the mediocre middle."
It's that vision, a fools errand of trying to rebuild around Stanley Cup hangovers, that has really sunk the Kings.
Before getting into that, I will give Rob Blake and the front office some leeway here.
A full rebuild where you tear down to the studs and potentially move on from franchise icons is very difficult and in a smaller market like LA, potentially impossible.
The business side of things plays a huge part, and even if there wasn't direct communication from ownership to try and stay relevant and keep the teams most popular players, it doesn't need to be said directly.
Blake had a tough task in that aspect.
However, every front office, for the most part, deals with similar constraints and manages to make it work.
When talking about this front offices'vision, I think it needs to be split between the vision now and what it's been in the past.
The lack of confidence in the past vision is what was highlighted in the above quote, trying to build around players in their 30s who were no longer truly elite players was always foolish.
It rarely works and was almost guaranteed to fail in bringing the Kings back to Cup contention. That vision was flawed.
The newest issue with vision is slightly different. The Kings are clearly not contenders, but also aren't in a spot to rebuild.
So what is the vision moving forward? Is it to feign competing in Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty's final seasons?
To turn the keys over to young players after stripping a once great prospect pool?
That lack of clear vision leads to the low confidence now.
Blake and his team haven't banked confidence over the last few years and the lack of a clear path forward compacts the issue.
The Pierre-Luc Dubois debacle was the final straw for most Kings fans and confidence in the front offices' vision is at an all-time low.