After Monday’s trade deadline, Kings general manager Dean Lombardi held a conference call with reporters about the Kings’ acquisitions of Kris Versteeg and Brett Sutter, plus issues involving re-signing Milan Lucic, the Kings’ placement in the Pacific Division standings and when injured winger Marian Gaborik might be able to return…

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(on any disappointment about not completing another deal today…)

”No, we were pretty much done yesterday. Who did you want me to get? … Once we got the defenseman, the only other thing we were looking at was — obviously with Gaborik out — looking for an experienced player who could play in your top six. I talked to a lot of people today but I didn’t anticipate anything and it didn’t surprise me.’’

(on getting calls from other GMs…)

”Well, yeah. This process starts…you get a bunch of cue cards and you put team on and you work through so you can go back to conversations two or three weeks ago, in terms of buyers and sellers. You’re not doing your job unless you’ve talked to just about every team, except the ones in your division, where you know it’s probably not going to work, because it’s just not practical. But essentially, over a two- or three-week period, you talk to just about everybody. There’s a funnel effect on guys that you continue to check in with, then as you narrow it down it gets smaller and smaller. Then after last night, today you get more incoming calls because people are looking to dump or move people. This is a two- or three-week process, and quite frankly you could say getting Lecavalier and Schenn when we did was part of this chain of events. It’s just that we did it earlier. We probably started the ball rolling, in terms of the trade deadline, with that deal.’’

(did last year’s Sekera deal impact how you looked at rentals this year?)

”For sure. You always learn from things, right? Obviously it’s no reflection on the player. He’s a good player. But there is an issue of timing. There is an issue of cost. There is an issue, let’s face it, of how the team did. This is one case where I guess hindsight is 20/20, when you can evaluate the value of a deal. Yeah, you learn from every deal you make, good or bad. It’s not the player; it’s the result. But that’s all part of gaining experience and learning from it. You learn from that one just like you learn from the Gaborik one. If you’re going to make mistakes, you better face up to it, but I just want to make clear, it’s not a mistake in the sense of the player. It’s a cost factor, it’s a timing factor and then it’s a results factor. It’s not a reflection on the quality of the player.’’

(with teams closing in, standings-wise, are you comfortable with where you sit, post-deadline?)

”Well, I think I’ve said this to you guys and I’ve said it to the players. A couple things. There’s always a different set of challenges, in terms of what this era is going to stand for. One of them is, in fact, having a better regular season and not having to finish in seventh or eighth place. There is an advantage to it, as well as a challenge. You should want to win your division as well as the Stanley Cup. Now we all know that the Cup is clearly the most important by far, however, it’s still a challenge that any team is going to want to pride itself on being the top team. It’s to be good during both and excel during both. So that is one of the goals they had set out for. Now, for the first time in these guys’ era, they got off to a big lead. There’s a mindset that a real pro has to learn to deal with. You’ve got a big lead, so what are you going to do with it? Are you going to let some games go that you weren’t ready for, or are you going to meet the challenge? I think they’re in the midst of that now. You can’t look back and say, `Well, this happened four years ago or three years ago. They had a big lead and let it go.’ But this is new turf for a lot of them, and it’s also new in the sense — and you’ve heard me talk about it, too — of the transition in the leadership group. Because we lost some guys who knew how to win. Some guys are responsible for taking over and making sure that this doesn’t happen.

”So am I comfortable? No. I mean, I’d like to have a 20-point lead. Quite frankly, if we still had a 10-point lead, I probably wouldn’t be comfortable. But I think last night, as everybody who called me said today… All the calls that I took, I think every conversation started out with, `What a game last night. That was one intense game. That was a high-level playoff game.’ I think it’s very clear that this battle between the Southern California teams is not going away any time soon, when you look at the average age of the two teams. I guess that’s what sports is supposed to be about. After the intensity of last night, you could have a 20-point lead and you still wouldn’t be comfortable, because that was a war and you better show up ready to play. I mean, that was a man’s game last night. Like I said, every general manager who called me today started our conversation saying, `What a game that was.’ Other than the fact that we had to wait 10 minutes for a (replay) decision. Everything else was pretty good.’’

(on whether he is trying to get an extension done with Lucic and where that stands…)

”I think it’s safe to say we’ve had a number of discussions with all of our (impending) free agents and we’re trying to piece together the puzzle. Everything has been pretty positive up to this point. The only risk on that is, you run the risk of, let’s face it, it’s not easy for some players — young, old — when you sit down after we got Kopitar and put together our plan, you see how some things come together with Schenner and Lecavalier. Then you look at your team and kind of get your plan together well before the deadline. That’s the one thing, when somebody asked me if Sekera changed things, well, one thing it did that had nothing to do with the player is, it made it very clear to me that you have to have… You see people having a plan for building, right? I mean, any time you to a GM he says, `I’ve got a three-, five-year building plan,’ and I guess it’s safe to say I’ve got pretty good experience in that. The reality is, as I’ve told a number of people, I don’t have any experience in trying to stay on top. That’s the reality. I can say I’ve been around and I’m one of the most senior GMs out there, but the truth is, it’s a different animal. It’s where we all want to be, but when you get there you go, `Wow, this is different from trying to build like I did in San Jose and here.’

One thing I learned from last year is, whether you want to call it a five-year plan, you’ve got to put that in place. I don’t know if you want to call it a plan or a window, but that should have a plan, too. So in learning from that experience, about two months ago we really started looking at a five-year plan, so to speak, knowing that it has to change if the cap is going up and what players might do. We started after Kopitar was done, and staying within that framework and then trying to sign a number of guys — not just Looch but a number of guys — it’s all making them fit, right? If Looch wants this, then maybe give him more term so I can get this guy, who takes less term. The only risk to that is, you don’t want players distracted, because that can happen. They worry about it a little and what to do. `Should I take it or not take it?’ So we’ve erred on the side of, let’s open discussions here, because in the long run, particularly with these guys that you expect to `fit’ in your plan, you have those discussions. Then other guys that you haven’t opened up yet, you want to get through these guys because you want to move to the next guy. So, as you guys know, it’s very hard to answer your questions in a sound bite, because there’s so much more, but that’s pretty much it.’’

(on how much the winning background of Scuderi and Versteeg played into his decision…)

”Huge. Rob was fairly easy. The biggest thing was, as you saw that work out, keeping your eye on the cap and next year’s salary. I could have got him earlier, but there was an issue with the money for the next year. But the way that is now structured, it was almost like, you’re not going to get a better player than that for what we’re going to end up paying. Then comes the issue of, before we did it, Darryl and the coaches and I and Blakey, we sat and watched Rob’s game in Pittsburgh and Chicago, then we put in the games that he played in the conference finals with us before he left, and tried to make a decision on, was the drop-off, so to speak, an issue of him getting slower, or maybe the role and the fit not being right, with him getting caught in between. When all that work was done, Darryl talked to him. We got permission from Chicago to talk to him before. One thing good about it is, he knows what Darryl expects. I talked to him about the team now and the other thing, about moving his family. It was critical. One of the reasons I think he left was because his wife wanted to be closer to his family. I said, `I don’t want you coming out here if the wife is staying back east,’ and she was all excited. He commands a lot of respect in that room. Like I said, given what we have to pay him, as well as fitting in, it almost makes too much sense.

”Then on the other guy [Versteeg], you’ve seen us do that before, when we got Stoll and Mike (Richards). It was either guys who had been to the finals and won, or veterans who had been in that position. Certainly, Versteeg fits that. The other thing too is, Darryl is very familiar with Versteeg. So maybe we’re not as familiar with him as maybe Scuderi having been here, there’s also a history with Versteeg and the Sutter family, if you go back to his time in Alberta. But the winning part you’re talking about, absolutely. It’s a war zone and you better know what you’re getting yourself into. I think we just had a taste of that last night.’’

(on whether Blackhawks’ early moves pressured other teams to make moves…)

”No. I think now you’re getting into one of the original questions here, or what I alluded to. You’ve got to have a plan and stick with it, in building as well as the `window.’ I’ve never been like, `Oh, they did this so we’ve got to do that.’ I think that’s dangerous. I clearly don’t think it came into play here. If you look at the money, we had to take a piece of Ehrhoff this year. Well, I knew Stan (Bowman) was getting Ladd. The only reason it got held up was, there was part of the money he had to have. So, I wanted Scuderi. `I know you’re getting Ladd so that’s why you have to have 50 percent.’ Hey, you do what you have to do. It doesn’t surprise me one bit. I mean, you could have guessed that he was going to do that two months ago. He’s really good at what he does. No doubt about it. If you look at it, it doesn’t surprise me one bit, but does that make us go out and say, `Wow, we’ve got to do this and that’? No. I think that’s dangerous. You’ve got to look at your team. You might look at your matchups, but if you start getting into that you might start throwing around first-round picks before you know it.’’

(on when Gaborik might be able to return…)

”The goal would be sometime a little prior to the playoffs. We’ll see. The things with these things, there is an element of two things. Number one is how quickly he heals. Secondly is how hard he works. I think you guys know the story of Tony Granato. It was a little different with his ACL when I had him in San Jose. He set a record for coming back in six weeks. It was ridiculous. So part of a player coming back from this type of injury is, one, just his biological makeup, in terms of healing. Second is how hard you work. Granato was an absolute nut, and broke the record for coming back. Somebody with Granato’s injury, it took five weeks and other people took 10 weeks. So we’ll see, but that would probably be a reasonable estimate, sometime close to the playoffs. Very close.’’

(what kind of input, if any, did Darryl have on the trade for Brett Sutter?)

”The chances are, probably in the next couple days, we’re going to call him up and play him on the first line and move Carter and Kopitar down. No, no. Blakey made this call, because Blakey runs this (AHL) team. Blakey came to me with this, three weeks ago, and he said, `We really need a kid like this in the minors.’ He knows how hard he works and what he stands for. I said, `Well, you know what the issue is. As a player, I’ve got no issue with this guy, because he’s a Sutter. He’s your old, throw-back Sutter. I’d take him in a second. But you’ve got to make a decision, as the general manager of that team, is there any potential whatever?’ He did some checking on Brett and actually had a talk with Darryl. So, you’d have to ask Blakey more specifically, but that was my question to him. But as far as the player, you’d definitely want this guy around your younger players, that’s for sure. He could come up and help you when he needs to, because he ain’t going to cheat you, that’s for sure.’’