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Kings Franchise All-Jersey-Number Hall of Shame

Even more subjective than the last post, but a kind of obvious companion to it. I did not consider anyone pre-black-silver-Chevron era, because my memory is not good enough to recall people I disliked pre-…(um)…Mikko Makela. And it wouldn’t be fair.

Again, the rules are: to qualify, you have to be, according to me, the lamest person in Kings history ever to wear a given number.

I noticed as I was compiling the list that there are really only two catagories of shame. (1) Veterans who played great for someone else and sucked for us; (2) draft picks and prospects that didn’t pan out. Seven defensemen, four goalies, 27 forwards. So you’d have to cut about 14 forwards and a couple of goalies to get down to a properly shameful squad of 22. I would cut the future Hall-of-Famers or other sorta-stars who came to LA to suck: Roenick, Ronning, Fuhr, Carter, Tocchet, Stevens, Ferarro, Parrish, Straka, Heinze. Gotta cut two more. Okay, Klima, Tambellini. And two goalies have to go. Knickle and Fuhr. Okay, so here is the full expanded roster, with the opening night line-up following:

1 Rick Knickle
3 Denis Tsygurov
5 Aki Berg
6 Maxim Kuznetzov
7 Cliff Ronning
8 Rene Chapdelaine
9 Ilkka Sinisalo
10 Alyn McCauley
11 Anson Carter
12 Sylvain Couturier

Marko Tuomainen

14 Kyosti Karjalainen
21 Kai Nurminen
22 Rick Tocchet
24 Mikko Makela
25 Kevin Stevens
26 Ray Ferraro
28 Guy Leveque
29 Roman Vopat
31 Grant Fuhr
32 Roman Cechmanek
33 Jan Vopat
37 Mark Parrish

Patrice Tardif

39 Dan Cloutier
41 Brandy Semchuk
42 Tom Preissing
44 Lauri Tukonen
47 Ladislav Nagy
50 Donald MacLean
51 Jeff Tambellini
55 Pavel Rosa
57 Steve Heinze
62 Scott Barney
77 Rob Cowie
82 Martin Straka
85 Petr Klima
97 Jeremy Roenick

And now, your opening night roster:

MacLean/Makela/Sinisalo

Karjalainen/Nurminen/Tuomainen

Couturier/Nagy/Leveque

Tardif/R. Vopat/Tukonen

(Semchuk: healthy scratch)

(McCauley, IR)

Berg/Tsugurov

Kuznetzov/Cowie

J. Vopat/Preissing

(Chapdelaine)

Cloutier

Cechmanek

Now, you can’t tell me that’s not a bad team.

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