They’re Looking for the Situation to Be Just Ducky

In seeking a successor to Dave Taylor, the Kings are looking for a general manager who will be dynamic and daring.

An experienced executive who has no previous ties to the organization, so he won’t be blinded by sentiment when he takes on the mission that stymied his seven predecessors: getting the Kings’ name etched on the Stanley Cup.

He won’t be afraid to take chances. He will hire capable people and he will trust them and give them the freedom to do their jobs

He will be able to communicate with players, coaches, fans and the media, and he will be well-connected around the league.

In essence, the Kings want Brian Burke.

Sorry, he’s busy. He’s in Anaheim, where the Mighty Ducks are preparing for their first-round playoff series against Calgary this weekend.

To King fans, it’s sacrilege to suggest emulating their younger rivals. But the facts are clear: The Ducks have made the playoffs two of the last three seasons and reached the seventh game of the Cup finals in 2003. The Kings have missed the playoffs in each of the last three seasons, and all they have to show for 38 seasons are a division title in 1991, a conference championship banner from 1993, and tired stories about the Miracle on Manchester.

Enough already.

To Tim Leiweke, president of the Kings’ parent company, it makes business sense to follow the successful path mapped out by the Ducks.

When Bryan Murray resigned as the Ducks’ general manager in 2004, leaving a bounty of young talent and a payroll bloated by the foolish signing of Sergei Fedorov, the Ducks hired Burke to rescue them. His tenure as a general manager in Vancouver and an executive at the league’s New York headquarters prepared him to clean out the deadwood, nurture the kids and become the face of a franchise that must take dramatic steps to stand out from the crowd of local sports teams.

Which is what the Kings require of their next general manager.

“I give Brian credit. If you want a role model on what we’re going through here, as far as what you want next, he’s it,” Leiweke said Tuesday after announcing that Taylor had been relieved of his job. “He walked into a great situation with the young talent. He walked into a great situation with a few key nucleus people. He had money to spend and made a brilliant decision with [signing] Scott Niedermayer, and to Burkie’s credit, he’s been absolutely perfect.

“I have huge respect for Brian Burke. I have huge respect for the Ducks and where they’re at. And right now I would say that the Kings are looking at the Ducks and saying, ‘That’s where we need to get to.’ And that’s not an easy thing for us to do, but it’s the right thing for us to do.

“We want to put someone in a situation where they can walk in here and have that kind of success by making big, bold decisions. Burkie made tough decisions, but he did it.”

Because Burke is unavailable, the Kings had to pursue the next-best option. By all indications, they’ve decided on Dean Lombardi and might announce his hiring as soon as Friday.

Lombardi must decide if there’s a job in the organization for Taylor, who handled a difficult season with class, if not without mistakes. But Lombardi’s priority will be to cast an unbiased eye on every level of the operation, which has many features worth saving and more than a few worth discarding.

Lombardi is no Brian Burke. But like Burke, he’s a New Englander who played college hockey, got a law degree, became an agent and then became a club executive, in Lombardi’s case as assistant general manager of the Minnesota North Stars. Lombardi spent seven seasons as general manager of the San Jose Sharks starting in 1996, presiding over a team that in 2002 became the second in NHL history to improve its point total for six consecutive seasons.

He drafted well -- Patrick Marleau, Vesa Toskala, Jonathan Cheechoo, Marcel Goc and Christian Ehrhoff were chosen during his tenure -- but the Sharks’ failure to make the playoffs in 2003 triggered his departure. His trade record is spotty, and he became enmeshed in several contract disputes, some of which stemmed from budget restrictions imposed on him.

There’s no way to know if he’s the next Brian Burke. But if he can banish the Kings’ long-held belief that it’s OK to produce excuses instead of championships, teams will look for the next Dean Lombardi in years to come.

“We’ve got to find somebody that steps in here and views things differently than we have and puts a whole new organization together,” Leiweke said. “I think maybe too often here there’s been a sense of history and tradition that we’ve tried to honor. Maybe we honored it too much.”

It’s time to honor fans who paid hard-earned money to watch a team that caved in upon itself this season, and not for the first time. Get it right this time, and they won’t have to endure another season like this one. Get it right, and others will be copying the Kings, for once.