Matt Greene Bought Out by Kings
- Updated: June 23, 2017
It is the end of an era in Los Angeles.
On Friday, the Los Angeles Kings have bought out defenseman Matt Greene. The blueliner, who had spent nine seasons with the club, had one year remaining on his contract. With the buyout comes a cap charge of $833,333 for the 2017-18 and 2018-19 campaigns.
Injuries unfortunately contributed to Greene’s decline in recent years.
After playing in 71 or more games in each of his first four seasons, Greene played in over 38 just once since then, suiting up for all 82 games in 2014-15. This past season, the bruising defenseman played just 26 games but was still named the recipient of the Ace Bailey Memorial Award (Most Inspirational Player). It was the sixth time Greene had received the honour.
In total, Greene played 564 regular-season games for the Kings, which is good enough for ninth all-time among team blueliners. During that time, he recorded 67 points (16-51=67) and 458 penalty minutes. In addition, the 34-year-old registered a pair of goals and 11 assists in 61 playoff games for the Kings – his last of which coming on June 13, 2014 when he hoisted the Stanley Cup for the second time.
Say what you will about the numbers but Matt Greene’s legacy in Los Angeles should not – and isn’t frankly – determined by statistics.
When he was acquired from Edmonton Oilers in June 2008, this writer was upset on the surface, and understandably so. Fan favourite Lubomir Visnovsky had been traded. However, let me emphasize, “On the surface.”
While it was sad to see Visnovsky go, this writer became immediately excited to see who the Kings had received in return, most notably Jarret Stoll. But, Stoll wasn’t alone in his voyage to the City of Angels. With the aforementioned Greene being included in the deal, the Kings had become significantly stronger in the bat of an eye, so to speak.
In addition to his knack for winning face offs, Stoll was solid on both sides of the puck. As for Matt Greene, he was just a warrior as both were integral in the Oilers’ improbable Stanley Cup run just two years earlier.
With Greene, in particular, Kings fans didn’t have to wait long to witness his fearless style for themselves.
On a team notorious for their lack of depth on the blueline in previous years, Matt Greene’s arrival to Los Angeles could not have come a moment too soon.
With Jack Johnson already establishing himself and fresh off drafting Drew Doughty, the Los Angeles Kings made significant improvements to their defensive corps in a very short period of time. Matt Greene, while, unlike the former two, wasn’t known for collecting points, brought something far more lucrative to the table.
If you were to find images of Matt Greene in a Kings uniform when he’s not hoisting the Stanley Cup, you will find a vast majority of his shots in the gruesome variety. But, don’t think that this is a bad thing.
These pictures more or less sum up Matt Greene’s tenure in Los Angeles.
Some could argue that Matt Greene’s contract should have been bought out earlier, that his career with the Kings went on a bit too long. That’s fair enough. However, what isn’t fair is to dismiss what the native of Grand Ledge, MI, brought to the Kings, helping a long-suffering fanbase celebrate championship success not once but twice.
No one instilled fear in Kings’ opponents like Matt Greene did – and he didn’t even have to drop the gloves all that often.
Delivering bone-crunching hits to blocking shots with his face, Matt Greene not only epitomized the tough-as-nails persona of the Los Angeles Kings but he even became a textbook example of how hockey players are arguably the most impervious athletes in North America, if not on the planet.
While today marks a sad day for the Los Angeles Kings and their ever-loyal fanbase, it also marks a day of positive reflection.
Matt Greene was, to a large degree, the unsung hero for the Los Angeles Kings. He even instilled inspiration within the Kings’ fanbase. Greene allowed his fans – and possibly even his teammates — to live vicariously through him, believing that if he can return to action just seconds after taking a puck to the face, then they have no reason to back from anything, even if they are smaller than the blueliner’s 6-foot-3, 230-pound frame.
To say that Matt Greene has made the Los Angeles Kings and their fanbase proud is quite the understatement, but an accurate one nonetheless.
For nine seasons, he laid his body on his line, poured his heart out and took no prisoners. As a result, Matt Greene was rewarded with, among other accolades, two Stanley Cup rings; and his fans, a plethora of memories that will last a lifetime.
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One Comment
About Ryan Cowley
itsallaboutus
July 5, 2017 at 1:19 am
Well said. Cheers