Just got back a bit ago from the event. A very interesting night. Quite a few verbal grenades lobbed at assistant general manager Ron Hextall, chief marketing officer Chris McGowan and team president Luc Robitaille — most of them directed toward the first two — but they hung fairly tough and did a decent job of appeasing the crowd. Hextall, for not having a ton of management experience, seems very comfortable in these situations and isn’t afraid to give frank answers, to the extent that he can without tampering and/or giving away closely guarded secrets. For those who might have been wondering, Dean Lombardi is out of town for some draft-related scouting.

So what did I learn tonight?

1) Lots of people are angry about parking-price increases. Lots of people. It’s a huge issue, even more than the ticket-price increases. Most of the anger seems to be regarding Lot 8, which has increased from $20 to $30 per game. There was particular concern among the female fans, who expressed concern about walking to their parking lots, which are getting farther and farther away even as they’re also getting more and more expensive. Not a lot of answers from the Kings folks on this one. They say they don’t totally control the parking prices and that much of the problem comes from new construction taking the place of parking lots. That one got a lot of justified chuckles, because who’s building the majority of those buildings? A fella by the name of Anschutz.

2) Fans don’t care that the Kings are losing money. Fans didn’t say that; Chris McGowan did, several times. They’re done talking about the fact that they’re losing money because, they say, the fans don’t care. So either I’ve been way off base on the importance of this issue, or what I saw tonight was a real strong attempt at a Jedi Mind Trick.

3) There are some angry fans out there. And I’m not necessarily saying it’s unjustified, but even people who were complementary of the Kings in some areas had some real stinging criticisms, in just about every area you can imagine. Parking prices, ticket prices, beer prices, price and selection of food, season-ticket representatives, time-share salesmen, free-agent signings, draft picks (including Thomas Hickey, a year later) and coaching. That’s just off the top of my head. Again, I’m not saying all the questions — or even most of them — were unjustified, and there were a lot of strong questions as well, but I have to say that I underestimated how upset fans are.

There are so many other things. I took very detailed notes and starting tomorrow morning I’ll go through and give you the highlights of the questions and answers. As I indicated before, Hextall gave the best answers, on topics ranging from acquiring a goalie (don’t hold your breath), acquiring a defenseman (they will aggressively look to trade for a 30-or-under defenseman), Jonathan Bernier playing in L.A. next year (possible but far from certain), the re-signing of Patrick O’Sullivan (they’re working on it), the buyout of Dan Cloutier (they’re talking about it but haven’t made a decision) and a bunch of other stuff. I’ll get into more detail tomorrow morning…