In 1987, the Los Angeles Kings entered the NHL Draft with the sixth overall pick while the Buffalo Sabres, New Jersey Devils, and Vancouver Canucks had the first three picks. However, the Canucks would trade that pick to the Boston Bruins.
The next team was the Dallas North Stars, but they would work out a trade with the Los Angeles Kings that saw them move two spots back while adding a third-round pick in that year's draft. The Kings would go on to select defenseman Wayne McBean with that pick, but with the talent in that year's class, it will be one of the biggest 'what ifs' for the Kings.
The first three picks that year would be Pierre Turgeon first overall to the Buffalo Sabres, followed by Brendan Shanahan by the New Jersey Devils, and then Glen Wesley by the Bruins. Each of those players would play at least 1,275 games in their career, with Turgeon averaging over a point per game, Shanahan just under a point per game, but would win three Stanley Cups.
Meanwhile, Wesley was a defenseman who played 20 years in the NHL and won a Stanley Cup with the Hurricanes in 2006.
As for Wayne McBean, he would play only 211 games in his career but all of them would be with the New York Islanders as the Kings traded him before he reached the NHL.
LA Kings (and most of the NHL) might have missed out on the best player in this class
The Los Angeles Kings clearly wanted to move up and if they could have worked out a trade with the Canucks, they would have put themselves in position to select Wesley and that would have been a much better pick and would have been the defenseman they were looking for.
However, the Kings and pretty much every team in the first 14 picks could have made a much better selection if they had picked Joe Sakic. He would go 15th overall to the Quebec Nordiques (who would become the Colorado Avalanche) and had an incredible 20 year career that included two Stanley Cups and 12 All-Star appearances.
The selection of Joe Sakic would have been incredible for a Los Angeles Kings that already had Wayne Gretzky, Bernie Nicholls, and Luc Robitaille. By adding in Joe Sakic to that offense, it would have been almost unstoppable for the rest of the league and the Kings might have won the first Stanley Cup in franchise history much earlier than they did.