Disclaimer: In no way am I advocating that the Kings should have spent more money to sign “by any means necessary.” Maybe they should have, maybe not. But there’s no denying that when the New Jersey Devils announced that Ilya Kovalchuk was coming back to Jersey, all of the wind was temporarily taken out of the fans sails in L.A.
We’re not going to talk about the pros and cons of Ilya Kovalchuk, cap hits, or 17 year monster contracts. We’ve already covered the pros and cons from the Kings perspective; and if you want to know about the signing, there are about 928394 blogs out there breaking down the contract and its ramifications. Instead, I wanted to look at the announcement from a different angle—from the Kings fans perspective and the enormous let down of a 19-day tease. But then again, it’s more like a 43-year-old tease—but that’s more than just a blog post.
It’s like being told that you’re going to get this GREAT gift on Christmas. We’re talking the new Xbox kind of great. Then when Christmas comes, you’re told you’re going to have to wait to open it. “How long?” you ask. Oh, you might be able to open it any day—we haven’t decided yet. Just stay on your toes, it could be tomorrow. It could be the next day. You never know when we’ll let you open it!
So there you sit—patiently waiting for the word while you watch everyone else open their gifts and play with their new toys.
Everyone else is getting little gifts here and there in addition to their big gifts. People all over are getting the gifts they wanted on July’s version of Christmas—and opening up stocking stuffers filled with 3rd and 4th liners to boot.
I'm not sure Kings fans want to see his face...
But that’s OK. Because even though you have to wait and you’re only getting one gift, you’re getting the best gift in the neighborhood. That’s what you’ve been told, you just have to wait.
Your parents have the most money of all the kids in the neighborhood to spend.
Then finally, after 19 days, you’re told you can open it. What’s inside? Nothing. It’s fucking empty.
They tell me that I was GOING to get this great gift—but if they bought it for me, it would be the only gift I got for the next 17 years. And on top of that, I could never replace my Xbox. So I’d be stuck with a 16-year-old Xbox and would only be left with a reminder of how expensive it was back in the day. Meanwhile, all my friends would still be getting gifts every year.
(Side note: Today was a really bad day to remind me that I owe money for my first installment for next year’s tickets.)
As it stands now, on October 30th I get to see someone else come into my home and play with the toy that I was told was too expensive to obtain. I wonder how that’s going to go.
What about that last year’s model? I could get an old Xbox to hold me over. I mean, it used to be cool and it’s still fun. But if I got that, I’d also be promised a new gift in a year. Oh wait—I can’t have that anymore because that gift was already shipped to Tampa Bay. Why was it shipped to Tampa and not here? Who knows… maybe it refused shipment to LA.
So now that Kings fans’ Christmas has finally come and gone (albeit 19 days late), what’s left? For the time being, there’s disappointment. There are siblings among us who are telling each other that it was just a shiny toy that we would have gotten sick of if we had it for such a long time. There are others and that it wasn’t worth it.
But then there’s another group. There are the angry cousins who are growing more and more resentful. The hope of the last few years has been able to shut them up temporarily, but when something like this happens, they rear their ugly heads again.
This is the “our parents don’t care about us, I’m NEVER speaking to them ever again” crowd. Sure they won’t. If their favorite team goes to the Western Conference Finals, I’m sure they won’t go to another game. And I’m sure they won’t admit that the person who gets PAID to make these decisions was right and they were wrong. But if the Kings suck, they’ll be the most vocal of the bunch.
These are the people who look at every wrapped gift and assume that Dan Cloutier or Alyn McCauley is inside. It’s the group that is petrified that management is going to bring back Patrick O’Sullivan or Kyle Calder. It’s the group of people that is convinced that AEG is the most sinister corporation in the entire world—and they killed Santa Claus long ago.
All of this is just a fan base’s way of dealing with the disappointment of empty promises. Some people will seclude themselves in a dark room for the rest of the offseason. Some people defend the decision to be fiscally responsible. And some people will bitch and complain. The more things change, they basically stay the same.
All I know is that if the Kings sign someone like Blake Wheeler in the near future, it won’t be the big gift I was promised. No matter how much they try to tell me it’s great and I should love it, I’ll know that I just opened a 1983 Atari.
Disclaimer #2: I’m not a gamer. If I screwed up any of these references, sorry about that. You can think about it when you go back to playing Halo.
Matt Reitz
Matt Reitz is an NHL Writer for ProHockeyTalk on NBCSports and the Editor-In-Chief here at ViewFromMySeats.com. When he's not shoving a mic in the face of NHLers or explaining why home teams should wear white, he's usually trying to figure out what song to play next on his iPod. It's a never-ending job.
