Is bigger and tougher truly better for the Los Angeles Kings?
That’s the latest direction general manager Rob Blake has taken them. I’m not convinced ‘direction’ is the right word but Blake increasing the team’s size and, in theory, the toughness over the offseason was his stab at finding an answer to their failure of getting past the first round — and, as an adjunct, the Edmonton Oilers. But it’s a lane to go down, even if this may be his last time behind the wheel.
Ultimately, to Drew Doughty’s point at the start of camp, falling to the Oilers last season was no great shame given they got within one game of pulling off a stunning comeback against the Florida Panthers and hoisting the Stanley Cup. The shame is more about how the Kings’ lopsided five-game loss in the opening round illustrated the growing divide between the other teams and where they stand in the NHL hierarchy.
The Oilers come into 2024-25 as a Cup favorite — perhaps the Cup favorite. The Kings are clinging to their status as a playoff participant and nothing more. And there’s the fear of a continual slow slide backward toward mediocrity under Blake, which in today’s NHL might be worse than being terrible and bottoming out. Irrelevancy, of which plummeting ticket sales are a leading symptom, edges the ‘mushy middle’ as a path you want to avoid.
Blake has had seven years to rebuild the Kings and then change course in his attempt to mold them into a contender. To counter this trend of diminishing results, his attention-grabbing moves were trading for Tanner Jeannot and signing Warren Foegele and Joel Edmundson.
This was no Barry Trotz power move. To be fair, Blake didn’t have the salary-cap space (or the no state tax advantage) to woo a future Hall of Famer and two-time Cup winner in Steven Stamkos, a Conn Smythe Trophy-winning champion in Jonathan Marchessault and a quality top-four defenseman in Brady Skjei, as Trotz did for Nashville. But cap management in the Kings’ build-up years is also pulling on a Cal Petersen-sized thread that only induces more agita.
The attempt to change the calculus was sincere, especially when navigating around the extension to Quinton Byfield that had to be done, making the 22-year-old a $6 million player. Jeannot, Foegele and Edmundson take the places of Pierre-Luc Dubois, Viktor Arvidsson and Matt Roy on the roster — indirectly, of course. These three embody Blake’s desire to make the Kings harder to play against — especially against the Oilers and other top teams.
Joel Edmundson is among the newcomers brought in to beef up the Kings’ physical presence this season. (Jamie Sabau / Getty Images)
“It’s pretty clear, there’s a reason they brought us in,” said Edmundson, a Cup-winning defenseman with St. Louis in 2019 who signed a four-year contract. “Talking about my first couple of years in the league, the L.A. Kings was a really hard team to play against. Big boys. It was always a long night. We always had a team like that in St. Louis, too. Playing against the Kings, it was a war out there every night.
“The guys that they brought in and the guys that have been on the team in the past, I think it’s a good group in here. We got a lot of size. We got a lot of speed. But I think everyone can play physical and we got the tools to do it now.”
Moving to L.A. offers a new beginning for Jeannot. Once an undrafted forward, the 27-year-old had trouble following up a surprising 24-goal rookie campaign with the Nashville Predators and then scuffled in Tampa Bay under the weight of a rare trade the Lightning didn’t win. Jeannot is back in the Western Conference and while he feels the style of play comparison with the Eastern Conference isn’t as different as it once was, he’s eager to get back to rough-and-tumble hockey and wants to draw his new teammates into that.
“The more guys buying into it, the easier it gets for everybody and the bigger impact it has in the game,” he said. “For myself, I’m just going to play the same way that I know how to play and what I’m good at, which is being hard on the forecheck, being really physical, making it hard on the other team. And I think that’s what they’re looking for out of me. Hopefully that just buys some more ice.
“When I’m out there, I take pride in sticking up for my teammates and just making sure that they have some space and they can feel confident and play their game that they like to play.”
Mind you, this group doesn’t figure to morph into the big, bad Kings that will win merely by beating up the competition. But Jeannot is a true ruffian, and Edmundson has never met a cross-check he didn’t like. Foegele is a no-frills straight-line skater who is willing to do the dirty work on a skill line. Kyle Burroughs might be more of a middleweight, but he plays defense with heavyweight snarl and his role is more important with Doughty out with a fractured ankle.
An increased physical presence — which has been drummed into the Kings over the last few months — played out in coach Jim Hiller’s first training camp since having the interim tag removed. Edgy play and hard hits have been the norm since the team scrimmages; Arthur Kaliyev unwittingly learned this after he suffered a fractured clavicle when hit by Burroughs early in training camp. This is the Kings’ retort after Doughty referenced “at times we did get pushed around a little bit” and Phillip Danault confessed “we should have been a little heavier” last season.
That itself won’t be enough to get Blake beyond Year 8 if he wants a contract extension and to continue as GM. They’ll need Byfield to soar even higher; he’s looked in preseason like he’s not resting on last year’s glow-up and wants to be a dominating game-changer at center. They’ll need Anže Kopitar to keep on holding off Father Time and the rest of their most impactful veterans — Danault, Kevin Fiala, Adrian Kempe, Trevor Moore — to continue producing on this team without a superstar that must rely on its depth.
It’s not just that. The Kings need these newcomers to be more than complementary pieces to fill out a roster. They’ll need youngsters like Alex Laferriere, Alex Turcotte and Akil Thomas to level up and occasionally do more than just contribute. Perhaps most of all, they’ll need Darcy Kuemper (and/or David Rittich) to be better than average in net and help a defense in collectively expanded roles survive the loss of Doughty for what figures to be at least the first half of the season.
There’s a lot that needs to happen. Some of this can be achieved and probably will be. But does it make the Kings any better than what they are now? It helps there was a clear separation between the playoff teams in the Western Conference and those who didn’t make it. Perhaps Utah will rise up or Seattle will bounce back, but the Kings can beat them and other middling outfits like Minnesota and St. Louis. And maybe a different playoff opponent will provide the matchup advantage they need to advance.
But what’s their ceiling? They’re still not at the level of Edmonton, Dallas or Colorado and while they won three of four games against reigning Pacific Division champion Vancouver last season, they can’t count on results like that year over year. Nashville and Winnipeg are probably more in their realm, but they’re in the Central Division. Vegas could be the closest direct competitor but it’s entirely conceivable both reach the postseason again unless one of the non-playoff teams closes the gap and disrupts the top eight.
It’s just the Kings are in danger of running in place; pretty good to win enough but never good enough to win anything big in this competitive window. And that’s the best case. The worst case is the goaltending doesn’t pan out, the Doughty-less defense gets exposed, the veteran leaders have an off year and Byfield doesn’t replicate or build on last season. Missing the playoffs can be a blessing in disguise except the Kings aren’t bad enough to get a great shot at a top-five draft pick.
The organization’s best young skating prospects are already with the club. The impending unrestricted free agents with trade value are Jeannot and defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov, but if the Kings are on the playoff bubble or securely in position, would they move either to collect future assets when they held onto Roy for last year’s push? The acquisition of more veterans to go with those already under contract beyond this season is further proof there’s no teardown coming. Not while they still have Kopitar and Doughty, who were adamant in their distaste for another rebuild.
This is where Blake has the Kings. When he introduced Hiller in May, Blake inferred his team needed to get out of the comfort zone it had created. His critique of their desire to win was a rare show of emotion and an admittance that his rollercoaster 99-point club wasn’t always on the same page. But it was a club of his making. He’s been at the job long enough to turn its personnel over outside of inheriting Kopitar and Doughty. Some moves to get them to this point have worked. Others to take them farther haven’t. Some were disastrous almost from the get-go.
This latest bid by Blake to unlock playoff success is centered around more brawn. These players must come through for him, because this could be the last direction he takes the Kings.
“It’s obviously nice during the regular season to be able to stick up to any team,” Edmundson said. “But I think the biggest thing is once you get into playoffs, you find those bigger, stronger, more physical teams, they go deeper. That’s the ultimate goal here, to win a Stanley Cup. Playoffs is everything.
“That’s what you’ve found in the past I don’t know how many championship teams. They got a lot of size. They put their bodies on the line. It’s nice to have some units on the back end. Some big, powerful forwards. We’re built for playoffs.”
It’s a long, long way to Game 1. Starting Thursday, we’ll see if the Kings and their GM’s big bang theory will work.
(Top photo of Kyle Burroughs: Jamie Sabau / Getty Images)
