In honor of Dustin Penner's first game in a Kings uniform, I sent an email to Oilers' writer-extraordinaire Derek Zona, which unfolded like this:

Quisp: can we have an email exchange about Dustin Penner's supposed "laziness" and "inconsistency" which I can then post as a dialogue between us?

Derek: Sure.

Quisp: My guess (or maybe it's my hope) is that people think he's lazy and/or inconsistent because he's good-looking and quite large. I'm also guessing his numbers tell another story. 

[Derek's response was to link to a post by Benjamin Massey, his cohort at Copper & Blue. Here's a taste:]

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"F/U."

I remember a couple of years ago, when Dustin Penner's stock was down a bit, there was a rumor regarding Penner for Dustin Brown, a prospect and a 1st. In my memory, which may be faulty, that prospect was Colten Teubert. Might have been Thomas Hickey. I can't find the article or my post on the article (damn archives!), but I'm pretty sure my memory is close to accurate on this. I bring up this bit of (possibly misremembered) ancient history because every trade deadline reminds me that what I think is likely to happen (or what anyone else thinks) never seems to have much connection to reality.

I would put today's trade -- Penner for Teubert, a 1st round pick and a conditional 3rd round pick -- in the same magical category as Ryan Smyth for an albatross and a waiver-wire pick-up. In both cases, if you told me Smyth/Penner is the player coming our way, I wouldn't have been anywhere near the ball-park in guessing what we gave up.

There has been a lot of yammering about how the Kings weren't going to get Penner or Ales Hemsky without giving up Brayden Schenn. Obviously, Kings fans were pretty certain Schenn wasn't going anywhere for a trade not involving a superstar. But there's a lot of ground between Penner for Schenn and Penner for Teubert and two picks. From the Kings' point-of-view, there's a world of difference. Schenn is expected to be a third-line center next year. Teubert, at best, would be fighting for a roster spot with Jake Muzzin in a couple of years, and a year or so later he'd have to deal with Derek Forbort and Kevin Gravel. I have no doubt (unlike some impatient people) that Teubert will have an NHL career when he develops, and defensemen are generally slow to develop (or they used to be). But the fact is, for the Kings, Teubert was half of a possibility a couple of seasons down the road. Schenn was and is a virtual certainty in 2011-12.

If I were the Edmonton GM, after Schenn, I would ask for Wayne Simmonds, then Kyle Clifford, then Andrei Loktionov, then Jonathan Bernier, then Viatcheslav Voynov, then Tyler Toffoli, then Forbort, then Martin Jones, then Oscar Moller, then Nicolas Deslauriers, then Maxim Kitsyn, then Muzzin, then Linden Vey, and then Teubert. Probably Steve Tambellini didn't want some of those guys, but is there any way Teubert was higher than tenth on the wish list?

Over the years, the Copper and the Blue has done some great writing on the topic of Dustin Penner. Here are some links and tidbits (from CatB and other places). Good stuff. I'll box up some quotes here, but follow the links.

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Four-year extension for Williams " LA Kings Insider
Justin Williams has agreed to a four-year contract extension with the Kings, worth $14.6 million. That’s a salary-cap hit of $3.65 million. Williams is currently tied for the team lead with 20 goals and will turn 30 in October.

Seriously. He's been getting $3.5MM for the last five years. Past injuries obviously keep his price down a bit, but he's having, if not a career year (he had been on a career-best pace but has tapered off a bit lately), a year that is of a piece with his two best seasons in Carolina. There was really no way Williams was going to get less than that $3.5MM on the open market, and I had been worrying that he might have his sights set on more, especially after his comments back in the fall about this being his contract year.

$3.65MM, therefore, seems about as low as you can go. I'm thinking Lombardi was able to get the number down by offering a longer term, which is something other teams might have been unwilling to do because of Williams's injury history. But that (the term) doesn't bother me, because the contract is tradeable. I believe this to be a tenet of Lombardi's, aside from just being (often-ignored) good common sense. Don't make deals that you can't get rid of if they don't work out.

As we've seen, Lombardi just doesn't do the "I've got to have this guy, no matter the cost!" deals. He doesn't trade for them, he doesn't sign them.

And, no, I don't think having Williams, Dustin Brown and Wayne Simmonds on the right side means that there is no room for Oscar Moller (currently playing RW, though he's a natural center), not to mention Tyler Toffoli. Players can play their off-wing. And, in any case, though that's a pretty great top three RWs (Williams, Brown, Simmonds), there is still room for another top six RW. At the risk of upsetting people, neither Dustin Brown nor Wayne Simmonds have fully staked their claim to a top six spot. Simmonds has shown the proverbial "flashes." Brown has played like a top-six about half the time, but spends the other half playing like a third-line energy guy, running people and coughing up the puck. If he is really a third liner, he's one of the best ever. I'm not down on Brown. But I can see a version of the Kings' future where, say in three years, the Kings have a real sniper on the right, and only one of Brown or Simmonds remains.

Jim Fox: "Everybody wants Brayden Schenn, I would imagine you’re not tempted to give up on him."

Dean Lombardi: "No, it would have to be really something significant. The way his stock has risen here with the World Juniors and what he’s done. It would have to be really special and quite frankly I don’t think he’s going anywhere."

It made my heart glad to hear that yesterday.  But the Schenn rumors are, of course, still humming along.  Puck Daddy noted that Lombardi also proclaimed "Brayden Schenn is not going anywhere," and mulled over what he sees as mixed signals: ""Don't think" vs. "not going." Hmmmm ..." 

In other words: So you're saying there's a chance!

To me, though, those remarks didn't signal any shift in Lombardi's thinking.  We've heard things like this through the grapevine before.

Bob McKenzie's Blog, 2/22/11

Dallas centre Brad Richards is unquestionably a person of interest for the Kings, but his current medical status, that is to say concussed, is clouding the issue somewhat. Other targets for L.A. may include Edmonton's Ales Hemsky, and to a lesser extent Dustin Penner, and Florida's David Booth. Los Angeles has plenty of draft picks and young prospects in Manchester but if the Kings are to part with Brayden Schenn or, and this is a real long shot, Wayne Simmonds, it's going to take an astronomical contract player coming back. Personally, I would be leery of any Kings' trade rumor involving Simmonds or any other young, core player on the Kings' roster.

That bit of information didn't make waves five days ago.  Why?  Because it matched Kings fans' understanding of the situation and how much value the organization places on him.  He is considered too valuable to give up for anything less than a special player.

That possibility isn't ruled out entirely, but it is portrayed as unlikely.  When Lombardi talked to Sportsnet, he probably spoke from the belief that there weren't any suitable options on the table.  If Hemsky fit his criteria, a trade would already have been made.

This news is no news.  But why is Schenn so important to hang on to?  Here are five reasons why retaining him is a good idea for the Kings organization -- and the reasons I believe Lombardi isn't just posturing where Schenn is concerned.

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As everyone probably knows by now, per Rich Hammond:

• Marco Sturm was claimed off waivers by Washington.
  
• Andrei Loktionov injured his left shoulder last night in Manchester and will get an MRI tomorrow.

Here are my free-associating observations:

• Notice how last night we heard that Loktionov hurt his wrist (oh no, but at least it's not his shoulder), and possibly re-injured his shoulder (OH NO!) and it turns out the next day that he did not injure his wrist and did not re-injure his shoulder. He injured his OTHER shoulder. Last year, the right one. This year, the left.
• Interesting that a reporter speculating that he may have re-injured his shoulder didn't notice that the side he was favoring (holding his wrist, etc.) was not the side that was injured last year. 
• I am hoping the fact that nobody saw doctors trying to pop his shoulder back in (as opposed to last year, when everyone was talking about it) means that the injury might-might-might not be so unbelievably horrible. But I am just hoping against hope probably.
• I really don't know what to make of Sturm getting claimed. Yes, Washington has been in dire straits lately. But did Lombardi think or know he would lose Sturm, or did he make the (reasonable, I thought) gamble that Sturm wouldn't claimed, and lost the bet?
  
• Whichever, he had to have calculated that it was worth it even if Sturm was claimed, because of the flexibility waiving Sturm bought him over the next few days.
  
• Or else he just didn't care that much, because he knew he could bring up Loktionov.
  
• That totally makes sense to me. 
• F***ing hell.
  
• I expect the next running theme we'll hear in message-board-land is that "Deano" now "has to make a move." My response is, yes, just like he had to make a move when Jack Johnson went down with a shoulder injury, or when Ryan Smyth, or Justin Williams, or Willie Mitchell got hurt. Of all the GMs I am familiar with, Lombardi strikes me as being the least likely to make a move because he has to.
• I would be surprised if Lombardi didn't make any deals between now and Monday at noon. But I don't think he'll do anything major that he wouldn't have done had Sturm not been claimed and Loktionov not hurt.
  
• For example, he's not going to say, "Gosh, I really didn't want to trade Brayden Schenn, but now I guess I have to!"
• He may well make a deal about which he will comment, on LAKi, on Monday or Tuesday, "losing Marco and the kid on the same day made me adjust the plan a little, but you always do that, that's hockey, injuries happen." Something like that.
• About tonight's line-up, my guess is:

Handzus - Kopitar - Simmonds

Smyth - Stoll - Williams

Clifford - Lewis - Brown

Ponikarovsky - Richardson - Westgarth

Alternatively, Richardson as LW1, Handzus and Lewis as C3 and C4. And yeah, an Oscar Moller recall seems pretty likely, depending of course on what else Lombardi has up his sleeve.

My only other thought right now: Sturm was basically invisible in his time here. Yes, I know he was recovering from injury. But if that weren't the case, we wouldn't have gotten him for nothing in the first place. He was never going to be on the roster next year. So Lombardi had to think he was going to do more than he did over the last three months.

Or he would have sent down Alec Martinez, just to be safe.

• First of all, what waivers do and what they don't do. Waivers are required before a team is allowed to loan a player to a non-NHL team. Usually this means the AHL. Sometimes it means Europe. So the main reason to put a player on waivers is, you want to send him somewhere else. The waiver rule allows other teams to have a crack at him first.
• One thing waivers don't do: waivers don't remove the player from your active roster. That only happens if (a) the player is claimed by another team, or (b) having cleared waivers, the team loans the player to a team in another league.
  
• But a team can waive a player and choose not to loan him to anyone. Why do this? Well, one reason is, the waiver period, from the time the team officially puts the player on waivers, to the time the player clears waivers, is at minimum 24 hours. I believe it's 48 hours if the player is waived on a Saturday. But it's 24 hours at least.
  
• And while we're in the 24 hour waiver period, that player cannot be traded, and he can't be loaned. So he stays on the active roster. [UPDATE: Also, the player's cap hit stays on the books during the waiver-period and in fact only comes off the books if/when the player is loaned out. See longer update below.]
  
• The Kings currently have the league maximum of 23 players on their active roster. This means, if they are planning on making a trade that increases their active roster -- for example, by trading a pick and bringing in a roster player, or by trading a roster player and bringing back two roster players -- they would not be able to make such a trade until there was room on the roster.
• So room needs to be made. You do this by loaning players to the AHL. But to do that, you have to clear waivers first.
• So the move is made now. Otherwise, Lombardi would have to wait 24 (or 48) hours to make any trade. And we all know these things come fast and furious as we get down to the wire.
  
• So Sturm is on waivers so that the Kings have room to make a move at any time, starting tomorrow at 9am Pacific Time.
  
• But why Sturm?
• The Kings could have sent Alec Martinez, Kyle Clifford or Jonathan Bernier down without having to go through waivers, as they are exempt. But as the team is required to have two goalies on the roster, sending down Bernier wouldn't help. And Clifford would have to be returned to junior, from which he would not be able to return until his junior season is over.
  
• Now, Martinez. He's been a healthy scratch the last two games. Why not send him down to make room? I assume it's because he's going to be playing on Saturday. But it might also be:
• Lombardi might want to have Martinez in his hip pocket, to be able to send him down at any time, just in case he needs to create two spots, not just the one he's started to make room for by waiving Sturm. 
• Lombardi could also have waived Kevin Westgarth, Davis Drewiske or Peter Harrold. But he didn't. And I think the reason is, he thinks they would be picked up (because they're cheap and useful).
  
• He doesn't think Sturm is going to be picked up. Because only a playoff-bound team would do that, and playoff teams are, for the most part, up against the cap ceiling and want whatever cap space they have to make trades. So they're not going to blow that by absorbing Sturm's full cap hit.
  
• So it's a gamble, but a reasonable one.
  
• And I think the conclusion to draw from it is NOT that Sturm is on the way out. He will likely stay right where he is on the first line.
  
• The conclusion I reach is that Lombardi wants to be able to add two roster players at any moment. He did this last year, remember? He traded Teddy Purcell and brought in Fredrik Modin and Jeff Halpern.
  
• Doesn't mean he's going to make any deals. He might not.
• But he's ready to.

[UPDATE: It's also true that the CBA allows a team to acquire a player via trade and only then place another player on waivers in order to (after the waiver period) send him down in order to make room. During the 24-hour period, the waived player is temporarily given "non-roster" status. The problem is, during the 24-hour period, the cap hits of both players remain on the books. For example: Lombardi acquires player X by trade, and only then waives Sturm to make room; if the cap hit of player x plus the cap hit of Sturm puts the team over the upper limit, then the trade is an Article 50 circumvention and is rejected by the league. Therefore, the only way to make it possible for Lombardi to bring in players over a certain cap hit, is to preemptively waive Sturm so that he can be loaned to Manchester immediately if the need arises.

And to underline, because it seems to be causing a lot of confusion in the comments, a player who is waived and clears waivers doesn't have to be loaned out, and in fact remains on the active roster. This is why Sturm can play tomorrow night.

Re-Entry Waivers

People have asked how Sturm can be waived and then play tomorrow night without going through re-entry waivers. The answer is, a player only has to clear re-entry waivers if he has been loaned out and then recalled. If Sturm clears waivers tomorrow morning at 9am, he does not need to be recalled, because he has not been sent down.

And the team can send a player down any time after he clears waivers, until he's played ten games (or thirty days have passed) since he cleared waivers. If it's after ten games or thirty days, he would have to clear waivers again in order to be sent down.]

I told you that's what he meant.

Helene Elliott (helenenothelen) on Twitter

Kings GM Dean Lombardi on what he wants in trade market: "what we really need is, I think, some of our payers to step up a little bit at [continued on next tweet] Crunch time. That's still most important." On kopitar's struggles: "that's part of the process of maturation and learning how to win."

I also hear a little bit of an implied warning in that. People mostly look to the prospects as potential trade bait. I would not be at all surprised to see a core player who is "not stepping up at crunch time" be the one to get moved. (No, not Kopitar. Come on.)

[UPDATE: I assume Lombardi meant
"players" not "payers."]

Proposal: Booth to the Kings - HFBoards

To LAK: David Booth, Joonas Donskoi

To FLA: Oscar Moller/Slava Voynov Jordan Weal 1st round pick

or alternatively

To LAK: David Booth

To FLA: Oscar Moller/Slava Voynov 1st round pick

 Counter-proposal:

To LAK: David Booth, 1st round pick.

to FLA: Rights to Brady Murray.

David Booth, who scored 30 goals once a couple of years ago, has a cap hit of $4.25MM for the next four seasons. Taking him on without giving any salary back would essentially be committing to him as our one big addition for next year, at a cap hit that is about a million less than Lombardi was willing to pay for Ilya Kovalchuk. And for the privilege of over-paying for a one-time 30 goal-scorer, we give up two blue-chip prospects and a 1st round pick?

Obviously (?), I was kidding about Brady Murray. But I don't think Lombardi is going to take on another team''s bloated contract without Florida sweetening the pot. Cap space is an asset. And with Doughty et al getting new contracts, our cap space is shrinking. I would rather the Kings not waste it on David Booth.

Okay, how about:

Booth and a 1st for LA's 2nd?

I would say Booth for a 2nd pick straight up, but I really don't think anyone wants that contract.