Brown led with his heart while promoting a new brand of commitment and camaraderie in an organization that had lacked leadership. He embodied the LAKings at their best, becoming an unstoppable force while they reached the promised land in 2012 and 2014.
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Why not? Brown did something Gretzky and Robitaille couldn’t: He won the Cup for the Kings, fulfilling a dream many longtime fans doubted would come true. He also was only the second American-born captain to lift the Cup, after Dallas’ Derian Hatcher in 1999, and was the franchise leader in hits, with 3,632.
Brown ensured the Kings became more than a sum of their very good parts, organizing offseason workouts and in-season gatherings. He roomed with defenseman Drew Doughty early in Doughty’s career, and they developed rituals. Doughty got Brown’s coffee, ordered extra room-service desserts, and adjusted their hotel thermostat just so. Brown shared his wisdom. Doughty soaked it up.
A rendition of Brown lifting the Cup appears on a nearby monument to the team, so the statue should feature a different pose. If the people in charge of such things had a sense of humor — and a sense of history — Brown would be forever checking Vancouver Canucksin Game 3 of their first-round playoff series in 2012, a moment that set the tone for the Kings’ improbable first Cup run.
Game 3 was scoreless early in the second period when Brown leveled Sedin in front of the Canucks’ bench. “That was something for us to easily follow, easily just get behind and know that he’s running through the wall for us and we’d better follow that,” Stoll said. “And it was their best player, so it helped even a little bit more, put more of an exclamation point on it. Brownie was an absolute beast, and that’s what we were following.
At the time, Brown wasn’t sure which Sedin twin he had hit, Henrik or Daniel. “I still don’t know,” Brown said, laughing. “They made a point last year, when I retired, to come over and congratulate me. It was really classy, considering the history that we shared. Our careers paralleled and then just that one moment …”
Lombardi mortgaged their future in a failed attempt to win again, sticking with “heavy” hockey and ignoring the NHL’s shift to speed and skill. They missed the playoffs in 2015 and won one playoff game in 2016. That summer, in another bad decision, Lombardi stripped Brown of the captain’s C — which is almost sacred in hockey — and gave it to Kopitar.
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