The Los Angeles Kings won their last playoff round 10 years ago when they defeated the New York Rangers to lift the Stanley Cup.
They were a team that could be described using a lot of cliches, they "knew how to win", "knew what it took", and they "had winners in that room."
Now, those same things can't be said about the Kings.
Generally speaking, I don't like using the team "winner" to describe a player, you aren't a winner until you are and then you're allowed to carry that tag for the rest of your career no matter what happens after you've won.
Are Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty really still "winners" with a 10-year gap between their last playoff victory? No.
However, organizations and teams can develop a culture of winning. As mentioned, the Kings had it from 2012-2014, the Tampa Bay Lightning had it for a few seasons, and it looks like the Colorado Avalanche does too.
It's something that has to be bought into by the whole locker room, something that can be lost as quickly as it's found.
Kopitar even admitted during his exit interview that the consistent losing has impacted the Kings and needs to find that culture again.
"Yeah, you have to build that culture for sure," said Kopitar. "Obviously, the turnaround of players now, a completely different team than it was 10 years ago. It's about building it, we had to build it 15 years ago and we're going to have to build it now."
Kopitar was then asked how you build a winning culture.
"It's a mindset," said Kopitar. "It's up to each and every individual and there's an aspect of a team culture, which every individual contributes and you paint the picture."
Kopitar is right that it's up to every individual to bring that winning mentality every day, but leaders like him and Doughty must also take a big role in instilling that culture.
The Cup-winning teams developed that winning culture through players like Willie Mitchell, Jarret Stoll, Mike Richard, etc. Players who hadn't necessarily won before at the NHL level, but who brought a winning mentality.
Given the Kings' cap constraints, adding more players this summer to try and find that isn't an option so they have to find it internally.
Even if they could add players, they need to find the right characters, it can't just be adding players who have won before, we saw the minimal impact of adding Trevor Lewis last summer.
They can't keep hanging their hats on having "winners" who haven't actually won anything in a decade. The players, starting with Kopitar and Doughty, need to put in the legwork to reinstall that winning culture.