DEAN LOMBARDI PRESIDENT/GENERAL MANAGER, ALTERNATE GOVERNOR
Kings All-Time GMs
The Kings entered into a new executive era when the club hired Dean Lombardi as Kings President/General Manager on April 21, 2006. A veteran of 20 NHL seasons in the front office as an executive and a pro scout, Lombardi has a well-earned reputation for being one of hockey’s true visionaries while possessing a solid track record of success, building from within, and of development on the ice and infrastructure off the ice.
Lombardi -- formerly a member of the San Jose Sharks front office for 13 years, including seven seasons as General Manager and most recently a Pro Scout for the Philadelphia Flyers for two seasons -- became the eighth General Manager in Kings history. He is responsible for all hockey operations decisions, including all NHL player-personnel moves, directing the professional and amateur scouting staffs, negotiating all contract matters and overseeing the Manchester Monarchs (AHL).
Lombardi is now in his fourth season with the Kings, and due to the hard and patient work of Lombardi and his staff, the Kings are now in a position where they expect to contend for the playoffs and continue toward establishing themselves among the NHL’s elite teams. These expectations are the direct result of Lombardi’s first actions on the job with the Kings, as he immediately went to work on building his club’s reserve list, a methodical process that initially focused heavily on the need to improve the backend.
As part of that process, which is critical to building and to Lombardi’s overall vision, he revamped and improved the structure of the club’s scouting staff on the whole and the amateur scouting division in particular. Then Lombardi took the step of creating and overseeing a player development department to help the franchise take monumental steps forward off the ice all in an effort to create and instill a culture of winning.
At the draft table, the Kings have used 38 overall selections since Lombardi was appointed to his position, including six in the first round, five in second round and seven in the third round. The Kings have chosen at least one player in each of these rounds the last four years, and going forward the Kings have 10 selections in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft, including six in the first three rounds.
Lombardi has clearly valued the draft more than any other GM in Kings history, and the talent the Kings have drafted is the envy of hockey clubs around the league. Kings players selected by Lombardi and staff include: Drew Doughty, Wayne Simmonds, Oscar Moller, Jonathan Bernier, Colten Teubert, Jeff Zatkoff, Thomas Hickey, Brayden Schenn and Kyle Clifford. Throughout the last four years, Lombardi has also resisted altering his plan, and he has complimented the Kings’ roster with other young players such Jack Johnson, the third overall selection in the 2005 NHL Entry Draft who Lombardi acquired in a trade, and with college free agent signings such as Teddy Purcell and Davis Drewiske, who helps bolster a blueline that is suddenly one of the organization’s greatest strengths.
While the Kings were garnering top talent at the annual NHL Entry Draft and beyond, Lombardi was also identifying a core group of players in Los Angeles to build around. Forwards Dustin Brown, Anze Kopitar and Alexander Frolov are elite NHL forwards who continue to improve their all-around games and grow together at this level. They have helped carry the offensive load for the Kings the past few seasons while some of the younger prospects have continued to mature and gain valuable experience.
With a young, solid core in place – a core that also features great character -- Lombardi this past season has been able to compliment that group with key veterans who sport a winning track record. This past summer, Ryan Smyth was acquired after waiving his no-trade clause to join the Kings; Rob Scuderi, who had just won a Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh, chose to sign with the Kings; and prior to the 2008 NHL trade deadline the Kings acquired Justin Williams, a Stanley Cup winner.
Williams, Scuderi and Smyth are joined by other veteran Kings – players like Jarret Stoll, Matt Greene, Michal Handzus and Sean O’Donnell, a Stanley Cup winner himself, passed on free agency to re-sign with the Kings – who Lombardi has been able to bring to Los Angeles through trade or free agency. Despite such talent, Lombardi remains a firm believer that you still draft and develop your homegrown players while complimenting that group via trade and free agency.
Despite adding a number of veteran players, the Kings remain a relatively young team. Last year the Kings began the season as the third youngest in the NHL, with an average age of 22.4. This year’s Kings roster features an average age of 22.8, which coincides with Lombardi’s philosophy and track record that your team needs to get better while getting younger.
This past year, the Kings made strides in many ways on the ice as well. The Kings recorded eight more points than in 2007-08, which is the third straight year they have improved their point total. Lombardi’s hiring of Head Coach Terry Murray also helped the Kings develop a defensive-first mentality as they significantly cut down goals against and shots allowed. The 2008-09 season also saw stellar play from some of the younger players on the roster, including Doughty who as a 19-year old led the team in average ice time, goalie Jonathan Quick and Simmonds while Brown made his first NHL All Star team while serving as captain – the youngest captain in Kings history. Kopitar also led his team in scoring for the second straight year while improving his defensive play, and he also played an important role in the newly formed leadership group with Greene, a fellow assistant captain.
The Kings roster, as constructed by Lombardi, also features several core players under multi-year contracts. Brown signed a six-year contract to remain with the Kings; Kopitar (seven years); Greene (five years); Stoll (four years) and Johnson (two years) all made similar decisions to stay in Los Angeles. Williams (two years); Smyth (three years); Scuderi (four years) and Handzus (two years) are under multi-year contracts too. Lombardi, meanwhile, has accomplished all this with the backing and support of ownership to follow the development course while positioning the club well under the salary cap now and in the immediate future to help keep the organization’s homegrown talent long-term.
Lombardi is aided by a talented staff, which is led by Ron Hextall, Jack Ferreira and Jeff Solomon on the hockey operations side, and Mark Yannetti, Michael Futa, Brent McEwen and Rob Laird in scouting. The Kings scouting staff continues to grow as a unit while building cohesiveness and continuity. Once the annual draft is completed, the work by the club’s development staff – led by Nelson Emerson, Mike O’Connell, Kim Dillabaugh and Mike Donnelly – begins, as the Kings look to help young prospects develop and find their identity as they take part in summer development camps and the team’s rookie camp/tournament. The development team also works with prospects year-round at Manchester and with drafted players, and the team stresses conditioning and off-ice training more than ever before.
During his tenure as GM in San Jose from 1996-03, meanwhile, Lombardi helped build the Sharks into one of the premier NHL teams as they reached the playoffs five times – highlighted by two trips to the Western Conference Semifinals – and one Pacific Division title in 2002 after his club earned a franchise-record 99 points. The Lombardi-led Sharks in 2002 also tied an NHL-record with consecutive seasons of improved point totals (Bill Torrey/New York Islanders) while building a roster that became progressively younger in age each season.
He also made many key personnel and player moves, stocking the Sharks organization with a good mix of veteran stars and up-and-coming youngsters, that helped make the Sharks legitimate Stanley Cup contenders, and the year after Lombardi left the franchise -- when the Sharks advanced to the Western Conference Finals -- 18 of the players on that playoff club were originally acquired by Lombardi.
From the NHL Entry Draft, Lombardi was one of the first GMs in the NHL to consistently and aggressively maneuver up and down the draft boards, making multiple trades to enhance and improve his club’s draft position. His work helped bring San Jose players like Patrick Marleau, Vesa Toskala, Jonathan Cheechoo, Brad Stuart, Scott Hannan, Marco Sturm, Marcel Goc and Christian Ehrhoff. The Hockey News ranked the Sharks’ prospects (age 22 and under) as the best in the NHL in 1999-00 and second best in 2000-01. Lombardi also, upon leaving the Sharks, left the hockey operations division in fine shape for the immediate and long-term future as the team in 2003 had six draft choices, including two first-round draft choices in the first three rounds of that year’s Entry Draft (all originally acquired by Lombardi) which significantly helped set the team up to enjoy their future success.
One of the fore runners in engineering three-way trades, Lombardi’s history in San Jose as it relates to trades/free agency is impressive too, having brought in such players as Owen Nolan, Teemu Selanne, Adam Graves, Vincent Damphousse, Mike Ricci, Kyle McClaren, Mike Vernon, Todd Harvey, Bryan Marchment and Scott Thornton. Lombardi was able to keep Evgeni Nabokov during the 2000 Expansion Draft (from two new teams) and he hired Darryl Sutter to be the club’s head coach in 1997 and Ron Wilson in 2002.
An executive in the San Jose front office beginning in 1990, Lombardi first served as Assistant General Manager, a post he held the previous two seasons with the Minnesota North Stars, for the expansion Sharks before being elevated to Vice President, Director of Hockey Operations in 1992. Four years later, he was named Executive Vice President and General Manager and given the responsibility of turning around the young franchise.
In his first season at the helm, the 1996-97 campaign, the Sharks finished with the fourth most improved victory total in the NHL to begin Lombardi’s impressive streak of year-by-year improvement, which included the five straight post-season appearances from 1997-02 when the Sharks were just one of seven NHL clubs to qualify for the playoffs during that five-year stretch.
Prior to taking over as the club’s GM, Lombardi helped the Sharks construct a team that posted the greatest single-season turnaround in NHL history when the 1993-94 Sharks earned 82 points and the franchise’s first berth in the playoffs after the team improved by 58 points from the prior season. Another one of Lombardi’s many highlights was the Sharks’ 2000 first-round playoff upset of St. Louis when San Jose, as the eighth seed, won a seven-game series over the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Blues.
Off the ice, Lombardi was also successful in San Jose for creating and implementing an off-ice model development program that was designed to improve overall player performance particularly in the area of fundamentals. The principals and philosophies of the model were based loosely off an advanced program used by Major League Baseball.
Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and raised in nearby Ludlow, Lombardi received his undergraduate degree from the University of New Haven where he finished third in his class. He was the hockey team’s captain his final two seasons and he received a full athletic scholarship and the school’s Student-Athlete of the Year Award. In 1985, Lombardi earned his Law Degree (with honors) from Tulane Law School where he specialized in Labor Law.
Prior to joining Minnesota, Lombardi spent three seasons as a player representative, including the representation of five members of the 1988 United States Olympic Team, and at the time he joined Minnesota’s front office Lombardi was only the second former player agent to be employed in an NHL front office (Brian Burke/Vancouver Canucks was the other).
Dean and his wife Wandamae reside in Manhattan Beach.
 |
||||||||||
| All-Time Trades | ||||||||||
| REGULAR SEASON | POSTSEASON | |||||||||
| YEARS |
G
|
W
|
L
|
T
|
OTL
|
PTS
|
PCT
|
GP
|
W
|
L
|
| 2006-07 |
82
|
27
|
41
|
-
|
14
|
68
|
.415
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
| 2007-08 |
82
|
32
|
43
|
-
|
7
|
71
|
.433
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
| 2008-09 |
82
|
34
|
37
|
-
|
11
|
79
|
.481
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
| TOTALS |
246
|
93
|
121
|
-
|
32
|
218
|
.443
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
