The team would still be marginal at best if it weren't for repeated infusions of special treatment by the league as Commissioner Gary Butt...er...Bettman proposed. It's just as well that the team became the Seattle Sea Lions, with strong Pacific Northwest ownership (probably the only arena in the league where coffee--yes, Starbucks--outsells beer). There's a strong four way rivalry between the LA Kings, San Jose Sharks, Vancouver Canucks, and Sea Lions that's fun to watch.
Sidebar I: the Anaheim Ducks were never quite able to make it a five way rivalry, and after years of falling attendance, became the second incarnation of the Cleveland Barons.
Sidebar II: it's kind of amusing that Sidney Crosby, the perennial league leader in whining to the referees, gets to spin out his career in Québec with the Nordiques, which franchise is perennially strapped for cash. The ownership mortgaged that team to the hilt to keep Crosby, and is thus stuck with a glorified AHL franchise trying to run with the big boys like Boston in the Atlantic Division. What's funnier still is the reaction in Québec to his thinly veiled requests / pleas to move to the expansion Denver Dinosaurs: not too many Anglophones get roundly booed night after night in French.
And what of Pittsburgh? The AHL re-established the Pittsburgh Hornets at the same time as the league resurrected the Baltimore Clippers. That's led to a smaller-scale Baltimore-Pittsburgh rivalry: kind of the moon to the Ravens-Steelers sun.