The Los Angeles Kings are a team that’s in ‘win now’ mode.

The Los Angeles Kings are a team that’s seen their ‘window of opportunity’ of championship success come and go.

The Los Angeles Kings have Stanley Cup level pieces.

The Los Angeles Kings need to re-shape their roster.

All statements could ring true about the Kings – an organization that came into this year setting a narrative that last year’s playoff miss was an aberration.

They got the rest they needed and were refreshed for the upcoming season, one where they’d get back to their normal Stanley Cup challenging selves. Except they didn’t. Los Angeles swooned into the playoffs and was ousted in the first-round by the San Jose Sharks in five games.

Four of the five games were decided by one goal, but the series itself didn’t feel that close. The Kings led for just 4:02.

“Last year we had a lot of built-in excuses, right? ‘We play for three years into June, they’re tired.' What else we got? ‘We had all the issues off-ice,’ and everything else. Well, you can’t go back on that anymore,” general manager Dean Lombardi said.

There was a belief the Kings could just ‘turn it on’ and they didn’t. This has led to some soul searching up and down the organization, from their players to their head coach up to their general manager. They all understand this is not the same type of team that won the Stanley Cup in 2012 and 2014 and changes need to be made.

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“Your players are different. Your economics are different. Your spiritual chemistry’s different, and you stop striving to take the next step. So all the innovation and spark that we had when we were building this, there’s a tendency to flat line because ‘we figured it out, we don’t have to do anything different, anything better, and we know it all,’ and it stagnates,” Lombardi added.

Los Angeles has several contracts and player personnel issues they need to figure out. And how they handle these can fundamentally shape the path of the team moving forward – namely whether coach Darryl Sutter who has guided the team to two Stanley Cups will return. Lombardi has said there's a contract offer on the table for Sutter, but him signing it isn't a 100 percent certainty. The Los Angeles Times reported the deal is for two years.

On Saturday, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said Sutter is “undecided” about returning to the Kings and wants to see how the team will look “through free agency, the cap and its prospects.”

“The plan I’m thinking is going to come out of this is going to take everybody not only accepting different challenges but getting on board,” Lombardi said. “We’re not going backwards by any stretch of the imagination here, but in order to re-create it, it’s creating a new foundation.”

Free Agency and the Cap

None of this can be determined really until after Lombardi tries to re-mold the team around the NHL Draft in late June and the July 1 free agency period.

The Kings currently have almost $66.4 million locked up into 35 contracts for next season according to General Fanager. Vincent Lecavalier’s $2.25 million is likely to fall off that number when he officially retires.

Los Angeles also has several other deals that are long term and have forced the team into little wiggle room for flexibility. The salary cap is currently projected at $74 million for next season, up slightly from $71.4 million this season.

Captain Dustin Brown is 31 and has scored just 11 goals each of the last two seasons. He carries a $5.875 million salary cap hit through 2021-22. Teammate Marian Gaborik is 34 and scored 12 goals in 54 games last season. He holds a $4.875 million salary cap hit through 2020-21

Los Angeles is also on the hook for $1.57 million of Mike Richards’ salary cap hit as part of a termination settlement with the forward.

In essence, the Kings have committed $12.32 million of salary cap hit for three players who accounted for 23 goals last season. One player isn’t on the Kings anymore.

San Jose’s Joe Pavelski (38 goals) and Logan Couture (15 goals in 52 games) scored 53 goals and carry a $12 million combined salary cap hit. Both are also under contracts that pay them through the 2018-19 season. Pavelski is 31 and Couture is 27.

Story continues