Rumor: Jonathan Quick's future as an L.A. King in doubt for the first time.

Quick may be unwilling to to step aside.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 4 years ago
Rumor: Jonathan Quick's future as an L.A. King in doubt for the first time.
Peter Joneleit/CSM/Zuma

It is still very early in the 2019 - 2020 National Hockey League regular season but in spite of that there is already plenty of negativity surrounding the Los Angeles Kings organization. The Kings have collected just one win in their first 3 games of the regular season thus far and although it is never fair to blame a single player for a team's poor performance, there are currently a ton of fingers being pointed in the direction of two time Stanley Cup Champion Jonathan Quick.

The long time Los Angeles Kings' goaltender has been nothing short of catastrophically bad to start the regular season and now boasts by far the worst save percentage and by far the worst goals against average of any goaltender in the National Hockey League this season. It is true that Quick has only had 2 starts thus far this season, so it is still too early to tell if this is a sign of things to come or just a very bad fluke, but in those 2 starts Quick has all but destroyed his team's chances of securing a win.

After his first two games of the season Quick now boasts an abysmal 7.17 goals against average and as if that was not bad enough he is also sporting a laughably bad save percentage of .750 on the season thus far. In the Kings season opener Quick allowed the Edmonton Oilers to record a whopping 6 goals against him and things only got worse in his second start of the season when the Vancouver Canucks lit him up for 8 goals of their own. It is fair to wonder why Los Angeles Kings head coach Todd McLellan left him in there for so long in both games, but many have now wondered whether or not the head coach may have been trying to send a message to his start goaltender. 

There has already been rampant speculation on social media regarding Quick's future in Los Angeles, but the reality is that the Kings may have their hands tied quite badly here. There have been some rumblings that the Kings could look to try and trade Quick away, but with an average annual value of $5.8 million per season and a contract that runs all the way through the 2022 - 2023 NHL season, it is hard to imagine how the Kings could find a trade partner given just how bad his start to the season has been. Unless the Kings were willing to take on a bad contract of their own, it simply does not seem realistic to suggest a trade is forthcoming. 

The Kings of course could also demote Quick and send him down to the American Hockey League, however one National Hockey League analyst does not believe that Quick would allow that to happen.

“I don’t think that will come at the minor-league level,” said NBC's Keith Jones as per The Athletic. “I don’t think Jonathan Quick would be willing to do that. I believe it has to happen at the NHL level.”

Quick does not have a no-movement clause in his contract so the Kings could choose to move him down to the AHL if they deemed the move necessary, but Quick still does have some leverage. The veteran goaltender could threaten to retire and leave the Kings with the cap penalties that such a move would bring them, a powerful negotiating tool in the event that the Kings would try to send him down. Again it is only just 2 games into the regular season, but given Quick's long history of injuries things are already starting to look very ugly for the Kings.

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