On a doubleheader day at the Staples Centre in mid-December, the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers are first out of the gate and playing to a half-filled building against the Memphis Grizzlies. Even though they have the hottest young player in the game, Blake Griffin, an improving team and two visiting players with close ties to the market, O.J. Mayo, the former USC star, and Zach Randolph, the Clippers are barely registering a ripple.
Next up, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings, playing before a sellout crowd of 18,118 even though the opponent is the Minnesota Wild, a comparatively nondescript team against whom they have virtually no history or rivalry to speak of.
But the building is jumping, loud, raucous and enthusiastic, and it isn't just because the Kings have made the long-awaited trade for Marco Sturm that day, adding another veteran piece to their rebuilding puzzle.
Coming off last year's first playoff appearance in seven years, interest in the Kings is perking up. In their 40-plus years in the NHL, the Kings have caught the wave of public interest just once, in 1993, when Wayne Gretzky led the team to an unexpected trip to the Stanley Cup final. Gretzky is the most transcendent player ever in the game, something that matters in a market that places a premium on the name above the marquee.
In those days, celebrities patrolled the corridors outside the dressing room with Laker-like frequency. Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan was a fixture, his face pressed up against the glass rink-side. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell were among the A-list celebrities who turned up as well, and their son, Wyatt, turned that early exposure to hockey into a junior career.
"As weird as this sounds, that [celebrity buzz]is a good barometer of the excitement in this town," says Kings captain Dustin Brown, who joined the team for the 2003-04 season and is the longest-serving Kings player.
"It kind of goes with the territory in L.A."
So much so that in Luc Robitaille's business operations department, the Kings have an executive, Heather Bardocz, whose primary function is the care and feeding of local celebrities.
The Kings had the Beckhams, David and Victoria, in for the opener, along with their kids, crowded into a six-seat box between the players' benches, which is where the Kings deposit celebrity families and couples whenever visiting broadcasters don't need the space. Shania Twain dropped by for a game, then visited the dressing room afterward for a photo opportunity, and Bardocz remembers that visit being particularly well received by the players. Wonder why.
"We definitely try to ride the line between making them comfortable and letting them just enjoy the game," Bardocz said, "but if they are willing to Twitter for us, or put something out there, have their pictures taken, meet the players after the game, we'd like them to be part of that as well."
Beyond their attempts to market the team virally, the Kings also launched a more traditional bricks-and-mortar marketing campaign at the start of the season by renting 242 billboards around town that feature close-ups of six players: Brown, Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty, Jack Johnson, Wayne Simmonds and Willie Mitchell, with only their surnames highlighted. It is a simple presentation, but visually attractive and ubiquitous. It's hard to drive along the freeways that dominate the landscape without being bombarded by images of Kings players.
"With a young and good-looking team, we wanted fans and potential customers to get a larger-than-life glance of these dynamic guys," said Mike Altieri, the team's vice-president of communications and content.
The efforts appear to be working. The Kings are averaging 18,065 spectators a game this season, which is 97.7 per cent of capacity and good for 13th overall in the NHL. Two years ago, they were in 23rd place, averaging 16,488 fans, or 89.1 per cent of capacity.
Nothing helps marketing more than winning, however, and the Kings gave a hint that they were for real by racing to a 12-3 start. Since then, they have fallen on hard times, and going into Monday's game against the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs, they had slipped to the basement in the Pacific Division, though they'd still won five more games than they'd lost and were among 10 teams separated by five points fighting for the final five Western Conference playoff berths.
Saturday's 6-4 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets snapped a five-game losing streak, primarily caused by a special-teams slump. The Kings were exceptional on the penalty kill early, but had given up power-play goals at an alarming 40-per-cent rate during their losing streak.
That wild up-and-down play can be symptomatic of a young team, but on Thursday, as they lost 5-2 to the Nashville Predators, they were booed off the ice. Partisanship goes only so far, and L.A. always had a sophisticated, if small, hard-core following, even back to the days of Jack Kent Cooke's ownership.
According to Kings coach Terry Murray, who is in his third season with the team after previously working in Washington, Philadelphia and Florida, the crowds started to come back midway through last season.
"The buzz is there," Murray said, "and it's up to us to grab hold of it and do something good with it. But it takes time, it takes patience and it takes commitment from your ownership."
More than anything else, though, it also takes on-ice success, something the Kings need to provide with more consistency in the second half of the season.
"There's winning and there's misery," said Ryan Smyth, the former Edmonton Oilers captain, who has been one of the hottest Kings during their slump with 11 points in five games. "Every team fights to make the playoffs. Making the playoffs is big for us, but it's so tight, by no means is it a sure thing."
Smyth arrived last year in a trade from Colorado, but played the previous 11 seasons for the Oilers. In Edmonton, Smyth couldn't go anywhere without getting recognized. How often does that happen in L.A.?
"A little more," he answered, "but I come from Canada, so …"
So, no, they're not quite to that level yet.