what are your thoughts on barry melrose being honored?
melrose deserves tremendous credit for what that team did in '93, especially considering how gretzky was out for the first half of the year. finally reaching the promised land of the finals was such a huge deal, and as a kings fan i finally felt like we had everything we needed for this team to finally break through.
and then came the corey millen trade a couple of weeks after the finals. the dismantling of the team began.
for the next two years, the kings sucked badly enough they missed the playoffs. melrose was fired near the end of his third year, and the team limped heavily for the next couple of years. melrose wanted a team that was bigger and tougher, and sam the disaster mcmaster agreed, and they systematically began trading off smaller players for bigger, less talented ones. dang, for a few years, john druce seemed to be "the guy". they were a terrible, terrible team.
how much blame goes to melrose? does it overshadow what they did that first year? i'm not a fan of what he did after the cup run, and think his philosophy did far more damage than good. it led to the team almost collapsing financially.