endeus

lakings LA will miss you Kuz 🖤 // Thank you and good luck in Pittsburgh!

Mark Yannetti, LA’s Director of Amateur Scouting, is a huge fan of moving down in the draft for more picks and generally only does it if they know they can get someone they want. It’s all behind closed doors of course but from my understanding (after listening to way too many of his interviews) they see it like this:

they make their draft board with player tiers, with each tier containing a handful of players they would be happy to get, and im assuming they match these expectations to x pick that they hold

if they are confident players within a given tier will be available even after they trade down, they’ll probably just do it. even better if a player from an upper tier is likely to be available!

Hermansson is absolutely not in the current LA Kings forward mould, this is a pleasant surprise for me! As with almost every prospect we won’t know how they shake out until years from now but I like to stay hopeful <3

Ok fine. Yaoi reasons aside (which I don't discount because i do think it's insane to keep trading one specific guy's best friends and expect continuous loyalty, but also this is competitive pro sports and these are professional athletes lol), we have SO many young forward prospects AND rookies, mike is very clearly building this team around macklin, and wekky never fit in that vision. mike doesn't need/want a guy he can't fit into a macklin-shaped team. tbqh writing's been on the wall since Macklin hit the tank, because if you have a guy who plays like macklin, the org HAS to play to that guy's strengths if they're smart. Ekky is very very very good, but he is not as good as Macklin and he very obviously did not fit into Mike's long term vision for a competitive team, or he would have tried to sign Ekky for longer term.

It's very normal for players to request trades when they're in a dead end and this team as it currently stands was a dead end for Ekky. If it wasn't now, it would have been next year or certainly in two; zero doubt in my mind that he would have walked at the end of his contract.