Once a Kings Fan Too
Joined: Jun. 2018
Posts: 39,688
Likes: 24,611
Drew Doughty actually had a pretty nice bounce-back year this season; with 8 goals and 26 assists, he outscored your best defenseman (Dahlin) and your next two best defensemen (Ristolainen and Miller) combined, and defensively was better than all three. Now you can argue that his contract isn't anything you'd like to get near, even with serious retention (and I'd agree with you), but that's another matter.
LA has so much cap space, we could absorb Eichel's hit with Doughty and Quick (plus Kopitar and Brown) still on the books. I've done the exercise.