(Wikipedia)  The Los Angeles Kingsare a professional ice hockey team based in Los Angeles, California. They are members of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). The team was founded on February 9, 1966, when Jack Kent Cooke was awarded an NHL expansion franchise:replace: for Los Angeles,becoming one of the six teams that began play as part of the 1967 NHL expansion. The Kings called The Forum in Inglewood, California (a suburb of Los Angeles), their home for thirty-two years until they moved to the Staples Center in Downtown Los Angeles to start the 1999–2000 season.

The Kings have not had a great deal of success in their history, winning their division just once in 1990–91,and failing to get out of the first round of the playoffs twelve times in the twenty-four seasons they qualified for post-season play, advancing past the second round just once.Indeed, the high point in the Kings’ franchise history was when they won their conference championship for the only time, advancing to the Stanley Cup Finals in the 1992–93 season only to lose the series to the Montreal Canadiens in five games.

Prior to the Kings' arrival in the Los Angeles area, both the Pacific Coast Hockey League (PCHL) and the Western Hockey League (WHL) had several teams in California, including the PCHL's Los Angeles Monarchs of the 1930s and the WHL's Los Angeles Blades of the 1960s.When the NHL decided to expand for the 1967–68 season amid rumblings that the WHL was proposing to turn itself into a major league and compete for the Stanley Cup, Canadian entrepreneur Jack Kent Cooke paid the NHL $2 million to place one of the six expansion teams in Los Angeles.Los Angeles has a large number of expatriates from both the Northeastern United States and Canada, which Cooke saw as a natural fan base.

Cooke was thus awarded one of the six new NHL expansion franchises, which also included the California Seals, Minnesota N......Full Article