Up next is the Los Angeles Kings who surprised some people (including myself) and made the playoffs last season. I thought they were two or three years out from where they were last summer, but they added Phillip Danault, Victor Arvidsson and Alex Edler before the season which accelerated the timeline a little.

GM and Coach

Rob Blake has been the GM of the Kings since April of 2017. The team made the playoffs in his first year and lost in the first round, but missed the playoffs the three years following and then lost in the first round this season to Calgary.

Todd McLellan has been the head coach with Los Angeles for three seasons after stints in San Jose and Edmonton before. His overall record with the Kings is 94 wins, 100 losses and 24 OT or shootout losses. The team has made the playoffs once and that was this year.

Salary Cap

Currently, the Kings have just over $19.86 million of cap space available for the 2022-23 season.

Next season will be the last year of dead cap space for Dion Phaneuf ($1,062,500) but the termination penalty for Mike Richards will be $900k and continue for a total of $3.2 million split over five years after this one.

Draft Picks

For the 2022 draft, the Kings have all of their picks except in the third round where they have Pittsburgh's and they traded away their 7th round.

In 2023 and 2024 they have all of their picks in addition to Pittsburgh's 3rd round pick in 2023 as part of the Jeff Carter trade.

Overall the team has 20 of their 21 picks over the next three drafts.

Free Agents

Unrestricted free agents are Andreas Athanasiou (27), Alexander Edler (36), Olli Maatta (27), Troy Stecher (28), Martin Frk (28), Austin Strand (25), Christian Wolanin (27) and Garret Sparks (28).

Injuries to Athanasiou and Edler took away from otherwise fine years for both players. Athanasiou had 11 goals and six assists in 28 games, which would have pro-rated to 32 goals over 82 games. He is still a bit of a liability defensively and injury risk, so I'm not sure the Kings will look to bring him back for the same money ($2.7 million AAV) he earned last season but perhaps half of that per year. Edler managed 41 games and put up three goals and 16 assists with 56 hits and 70 blocked shots. If he could manage 70 games with those numbers, he is still a productive player at 36 years of age. I think Edler can still squeeze out a two-year deal as a UFA at around $1.5 to 2.25 million AAV.

Maatta and Stecher are in similar situations as they are two players coming into unrestricted free agency on contracts that they won't come close to in money. Both will be a sixth or seventh defender on their new team or the Kings, so their contract should be commensurate with that role at around $1 to 1.5 million AAV.

Frk, Strand, Wolanin or Sparks could be brought back but I would think that any of them would be under two-way contracts.

Restricted free agents are Lias Andersson (23), Carl Grundstrom (24), Adrian Kempe (25), Brendan Lemieux (26), Gabriel Vilardi (22), and Mikey Anderson (23), Sean Durzi (23) and Jaret Anderson-Dolan (22).

Eligible for arbitration are Andersson, Grundstrom, Kempe and Lemieux.

If Andersson does re-sign it will probably be a similar deal to last year (two-way) and he might not get 20 games with the Kings to prove he belongs in the NHL, but maybe five or six. I wouldn't be surprised if the Kings move on from him.

Grundstrom is a little sheltered for the role he plays, so expect some reversion with his possession numbers next season as some of the younger players play more and need to be sheltered instead. Grundstrom has some offensive capabilities but can play a physical game (134 hits in 54 games last year). I would expect a two-year one-way deal near the league minimum.

Kempe had 35 goals last year and that puts him into a much higher pay bracket moving forward. He should double his salary at the very least to $4 million AAV if not more.

With arbitration rights and coming off of a two-year deal at $1.55 million AAV, Lemieux might be pricing himself out of his role on this team. We know that he is going to play about 70 games, scoring 10 goals, and 10 assists and get about 150 hits. He doesn't penalty kill and isn't a shutdown defensive player.

Vilardi, Anderson and Durzi should all be around $2 million AAV on bridge deals. Anderson-Dolan might need to settle for a two-way deal at the league minimum.

After signing their RFAs, I think the Kings will have about $7 or 8 million of cap space to add to the roster.

Their needs will be on the left side defence, the bottom-six and perhaps in goal as Jonathan Quick enters into the last season of his contract and Cal Petersen hasn't proven he can take over at this point. 

Roster

The Kings come in with a rating of 6.44 but should have young players that are trending upwards so that could easily improve as the season progresses and get them back to the playoffs next season.

Anze Kopitar (34) has two years remaining at $10 million AAV and while this club might not be vying for a Stanley Cup in that window, they will certainly be pushing to get into the playoffs both of those years. Kopitar is still the best player the Kings have as he does everything for this team, including the powerplay, penalty kill, faceoffs and defensive matchups with other teams’ best players. More importantly, Kopitar has been healthy for much of his career playing 1,210 regular-season games in 16 seasons.

After 17 seasons with Los Angeles, Dustin Brown has retired after playing 1,296 games and scoring 325 goals and 387 assists. His departure opens up a spot that includes some power-play time.

On the wings, the Kings have Alex Iafallo (28), Adrian Kempe (25), Trevor Moore (27) and Viktor Arvidsson (29) pencilled into their top six.

Iafallo will be entering his sixth NHL season and has never had a season with more than 17 goals and 43 points. He is a valuable player in many more ways than points as kills penalties and is used in defensive matchups against the other teams’ better players. However, he still sees over 53 percent of the time on the PP and this could see a decline as the younger Kings start to get more ice time.

Kempe is coming off a 35-goal season and will be hard-pressed to duplicate it but he did raise his shots per game to 3.2 from just over 2.0 last season. He more than likely will get around 25-30 goals next season based on 240 shots and a career average 11 percent shooting percentage.

Trevor Moore had a very good season last with 17 goals and 32 assists in 81 games. He could benefit the most with the departure of Dustin Brown and could see some added minutes on the PP. He might be a 20-goal 35 assist player next year if healthy.

Unsurprisingly, first-year King, Victor Arvidsson missed 16 games last year. The good news is that his 66 games were the most he had played since 78 games in 2017-18. He still managed 20 goals and 28 assists and was an important addition to the roster which allowed the team to get into the playoffs. I'd expect more of the same from him next year with the knowledge that he could pop for a 30-goal season if he played 75 games or more.

The bottom-four wing spots are likely to be between Carl Grundstrom (24), Rasmus Kupari (22), Brendan Lemieux (26), Arthur Kaliyev (20), Lias Andersson (23), and Samuel Fagemo (22). The Kings could also slide one of the young centers Quinton Byfield (19), Gabriel Vilardi (22) or Alex Turcotte (21) to the wing.

Kaliyev, Fagemo, Byfield, Vilardi and Turcotte will be given an opportunity to play in the top six moving forward. Sliding Iafallo to the third line might be in the cards sooner than later for one of these five.

At center, we've already discussed Anze Kopitar (34), slotted in as the number one centerman. Behind him is Phillip Danault (29) who had an excellent first season with Los Angeles after signing as a free agent from Montreal before last year. His 27 goals and 24 assists in 79 games were a welcome addition to the stellar defensive play that Danault brings to the table. What appeared to be an expensive contract for a player that had five goals in 2020-21 at $5.5 million AAV over six years now seems like a reasonable price to pay.

With the top two center ice spots locked up for the next two seasons, the bottom two spots come down to Blake Lizotte (24), Byfield (19), Vilardi (22), Turcotte (21), Anderson-Dolan (22) and perhaps T.J. Tynan (30).

I think unless moved, Lizotte has one of the two spots, while Byfield might have the inside track for the fourth. I do think that the Kings will need to slide over at least two of their young centers to the wing to get them more ice time in the NHL as they don't want Byfield, Vilardi or Turcotte stuck on the fourth line.

T.J. Tynan might get an extended look early on if he has a good training camp as he had 98 points this year in the AHL in 62 games. He recently re-signed with the Kings for two years with the first season a two-way contract split $800k/500K and the second season a one-way contract at $775k.

On defence, Drew Doughty (32) should be back healthy next season after having wrist surgery in March. The former ironman has not played more than 67 games in any of the past three seasons and only managed 39 last year.

The Kings are deeper than most NHL teams on the right side of the defence with Doughty, Matt Roy (27), Sean Durzi (23),  Sean Walker (27), Jordan Spence (21), Helge Grans (20), Brandt Clarke (19) and Brock Faber (19) all on the team or in the pipeline.

Roy averaged 20:59 per game last season with Doughty missing 42 games, but he might see his time come back down to around 18-19 minutes. He had two goals and 19 assists in 67 games and managed 124 hits and 103 blocked shots.

Walker can play the left side, so we will include him below with that group.

No other King benefitted more from Doughty being out of the lineup than Durzi. The rookie ended up with three goals and 24 assists in 64 games with 14 of those points on the PP. He struggled a little defensively at times, but he is a potential multi-category darling as he had 74 hits and 121 blocked shots. Expect some regression statistically next year.

Not many players in their rookie pro seasons that are drafted in the fourth round do what Jordan Spence did last season. He was sent down to Ontario in the AHL to develop and put up 42 points in 46 games which earned him a look with the Kings in the NHL as a 21-year-old smallish defenceman. He played 24 games with Los Angeles and was never sent back down after putting up eight points and playing very well. He was a little overmatched in the playoffs against Calgary in the three games he dressed for. He and Grans will only get into some NHL games next season if injuries or there are some roster moves above them.

Clarke and Faber are a year or two away. 

The left side of their defence is where the Kings will look to upgrade in free agency as they currently have Mikey Anderson (23), Tobias Bjornfot (21), Sean Walker (27) and Jacob Moverare (23) in the mix as Edler, Maatta and Wolanin are UFAs.

Anderson has been a fairly steady stay-at-home partner for Doughty and the team will hope to have that paring back together next season.

Walker shoots right but is listed as a left-side defender so for our purposes he will stay here. He had ACL/MCL surgery in October 2021 so it's uncertain how close he will be to 100% if he can play at the beginning of next season. That type of injury can take 12-18 months to fully recover back to where the player was before. Walker has never been the best defender away from the puck and with the ascension of Durzi and Spence, he might be struggling to get back his role on this team once back.

I'm not convinced that Bjornfot is ready for the NHL yet. It sounds strange to say that as he played 70 games last season and 33 the year before. The Kings feel much differently and continue to play him, but he has to improve at some point to justify that trust. At just 21 years of age, he has plenty of time to do just that, but I don't think he will ever be fantasy relevant. He is still waivers exempt.

Moverare was just re-signed by the Kings on June 15th for two years with the first season being a two-way contract for $750k/$325k and the second year is a one-way deal at $775k. He will need waivers this season to be sent to the AHL after playing 19 games last year with the Kings so he has a chance to stick at the start of the year. He does have a bit of an offensive component to his game as he has played 56 AHL games with four goals and 21 assists over the past two years.

I don't think Blake will leave the left side as it is to start the next year.

Jonathan Quick (36) is entering the final season of his 10-year contract signed in 2012-13 at $5.8 million AAV. His is a rare case that overall he has probably been good value for it. After three seasons of struggling, he was able to elevate his play last year and finish with 23 wins in 46 games with a 2.59 GAA, 91.0 save percentage and a minus 1.72 GSAA. Depending on how he plays he might become a trade chip towards the deadline, but there is also a good chance that he follows in the footsteps of Dustin Brown and retires with the only team he ever played for.

Cal Petersen (27) was in line to become the starting goalie in Los Angeles after three successive seasons of strong play in a backup role which culminated with 35 games last season. Once he was given the keys, he crashed the car a few times and never got on track. He did finish the year with 20 wins in 37 games despite his 2.89 GAA, 89.5 save percentage and minus 15.82 GSAA.

The Kings will need Petersen to step up this season and prove he can take over from Quick, otherwise, they will be forced to bring in somebody else. They might have already made up their mind on this one as we could see some UFA action in the goal.

Overall, this team is on the rise and with the additions and improvements of some of their young players, this team should make some noise over the next two seasons. They still lack that player in the forwards that is capable of scoring 40-50 goals but so are a lot of other teams.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you want me to focus on any players or topics by messaging me below or following me on Twitter @gampbler15.