2025–26 NHL team preview: Los Angeles Kings
LAST SEASON
Few teams have ever scaled the mountain as dramatically as the Los Angeles Kings did under Darryl Sutter in the early 2010s. Like a bolt from the blue, the Kings became one of the NHL’s most dominant teams seemingly overnight, winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in 2012 and again in 2014. They never looked like much in the regular season, but when the playoffs rolled around, they were pretty much unbeatable. Had it not been for the Chicago Blackhawks dynasty getting in their way in the 2013 West Final, the Kings legitimately might’ve had a shot at winning 12 playoff series in a row.
There’s no way the Kings win those two championships without Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty, and it made plenty of sense for the team to keep them around as mentors for their next wave of young talent. But the current iteration of the L.A. hockey club has far more in common with its outgunned predecessors from the 1980s than the overpowered Cup teams of yore. Sure, they’ve reached the playoffs in each of the last four seasons, but the end result for these Kings has remained the same with each passing year: loss, loss, loss, loss, all in round one, and all at the hands of the Edmonton Oilers. The only thing that’s changed (read: increased) is the degree of disappointment.
Get this: Aside from their brief run of dominance between 2012 and 2014, the Kings have won just one playoff series in the last 32 years. They’ve won their division once in their 58-year existence, in 1990-91. And here we are in 2025, more than a decade removed from the Kings’ last championship, and their valiant efforts to retool their roster on the fly have instead landed them back in the circles of hockey purgatory they’ve occupied for so, so long.
The Kings have a group of good, young players, and in a league where 16 teams miss the playoffs each year, they score points for consistency. But there are real questions that must be asked about whether this team, as presently constructed, is capable of taking tangible steps forward. Quinton Byfield, Brandt Clarke, Alex Laferriere, and Alex Turcotte all showed signs of improvement last season, but new GM Ken Holland didn’t exactly quiet his skeptics with his efforts to fine-tune the roster over the summer.
These Kings will always be labelled as perennial underachievers until they prove otherwise, and it’s hard to say they’re any better on paper heading into the 2025-26 season.
KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES
Additions
Corey Perry, RW
Joel Armia, RW
Cody Ceci, D
Brian Dumoulin, D
Anton Forsberg, G
Departures
Vladislav Gavrikov, D (NYR)
Jordan Spence, D (OTT)
Tanner Jeannot, LW (BOS)
David Rittich, G (NYI)
Trevor Lewis, C (UFA)
OFFENSE
These Kings are hardly anyone’s idea of an offensive juggernaut. They finished 15th in the league last year with 250 goals, only 37 of which came on their 27th-ranked power play, which operated at a piddling 17.9% conversion rate. Adrian Kempe was the Kings’ point leader on the year with 73, which wouldn’t have been enough to lead most other teams. And while some of their players could certainly stand to take steps forward this coming season, they don’t necessarily look to have a future offensive superstar waiting in the wings.
If anyone’s going to make that big jump, it’s probably Byfield, who finished fourth on the team with 54 points (23 goals, 31 assists) in 2024-25. Byfield is a big and powerful centre who recorded strong chance generation results last year, even if he hasn’t quite lived up to his pedigree as the No. 2 overall pick in 2020. The Kings desperately need Byfield to become a true top-liner if they want to become contenders anytime soon, and there’s a chance he could blossom into a Tage Thompson-like contributor in L.A. before too long. But it’s still a pretty big “if.”
Kopitar, who remains a fixture in the Selke Trophy conversation even as he nears age 40, is entering the final year of his contract with the Kings and has already floated the idea of retiring next summer. The Kings can no longer take his presence for granted. The good news is that, aside from Philip Danault, the rest of the Kings’ key forwards are all under age 30 — although it won’t be long before Kempe and Kevin Fiala, their two 35-goal men in 2024-25, reach that milestone.
The Kings didn’t lose much offense over the summer, with Jeannot and Lewis departing after combining for just 13 goals in 2024-25. For comparison’s sake, Joel Armia scored 11 by himself, and Corey Perry potted 19 for the Oilers in the regular season before adding 10 more in the playoffs. If those two (as well as 2025 trade deadline acquisition Andrei Kuzmenko) can remain on track, the Kings should have some decent secondary scoring in 2025-26. But it won’t matter all that much unless one or more of Byfield and Co. can find another gear.
DEFENSE
We’ve already mentioned how Holland, who replaced Rob Blake as Kings GM in May, has begun to change how things are run in L.A. over the summer. He did reasonably well in reshaping the team’s bottom-six forward group, especially if Perry can keep it up in his age-40 season. But the defense, which was inarguably the Kings’ strongest aspect in 2024-25, is another story entirely.
Faced with the prospect of losing top shutdown rearguard Vladislav Gavrikov for nothing on July 1, Holland made a splash at the draft … by sending promising young defenseman Jordan Spence to the Ottawa Senators for a marginal return. Then, if that wasn’t confusing enough, Holland went out on Canada Day and signed two middling veterans in Cody Ceci and Brian Dumoulin, both on the wrong side of 30, to big-money deals. There’s no way to spin it as anything but an enormous downgrade, especially considering that Gavrikov and Spence will make the exact same money between them as Ceci and Dumoulin in the 2025-26 season.
Perhaps the Kings are setting the stage for Clarke and Mikey Anderson to take on more responsibilities in the years to come, but it seems more likely that Holland signed Ceci with the misguided intention of having him play a similar role as he did in Edmonton. Ceci’s coaches have consistently used him as a top-four defender throughout nearly his entire NHL career, and he’s consistently floundered under those circumstances, most memorably while he was deployed alongside Darnell Nurse in the 2024 playoffs. The Dallas Stars inexplicably saw Ceci as the missing piece on their blueline this past spring, and they paid dearly for it — both in terms of the results on the ice, and the first-round pick they gave up to get him. Now, the Kings are paying Ceci $4.5 million a year through 2029.
Then, there’s Doughty, who is “only” 35 — three years younger than Kopitar — but missed half of the 2024-25 season after sustaining a broken ankle in September exhibition play. Doughty still plays huge minutes for the Kings when healthy and will likely suit up for Team Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics, but much like Byfield will eventually have to make up for Kopitar’s departure, the Kings will need Clarke to start absorbing some of Doughty’s responsibilities as he ages.
GOALTENDING
The Kings did quite well in reacquiring Darcy Kuemper from the Washington Capitals last summer, and it wasn’t just because they managed to offload the Pierre-Luc Dubois contract in the process. Kuemper had one of the best years of his career in 2024-25, putting up a sparkling .922 save percentage to go along with a 31-11-7 record and five shutouts in 50 games. Fittingly, he was named a finalist for the Vezina Trophy for the first time in his career, although he lost to Connor Hellebuyck (as anyone would). With all due respect to Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill, and Sam Montembeault, it’s more than a little strange that Kuemper wasn’t even invited to Team Canada’s Olympic orientation camp this summer.
With David Rittich poached by the New York Islanders this summer to take over as Ilya Sorokin’s backup from an injured Semyon Varlamov, the Kings will now turn to a dependable veteran in Anton Forsberg. Fresh off a successful five-season run with the Senators, Forsberg is a decent-sized Swede who has performed admirably behind defenses of varying quality. He should be insulated a little better behind the system in L.A., even with their personnel changes this summer. But don’t expect to see Forsberg make more than a couple dozen starts unless Kuemper goes down for a significant length of time.
COACHING
Jim Hiller is still the Kings’ head coach, although it remains to be seen just how long a leash he’ll get under the new GM. When Holland took over in Edmonton back in 2019, he immediately relieved Ken Hitchcock of his duties behind the bench. Most GMs like to bring in their own guys, and if the Kings find themselves in a skid for any extended period of time this year, don’t be too surprised if Holland brings down the hammer.
Hiller, 56, has served as the Kings’ bench boss since midway through the 2023-24 season, when he took over from Todd McLellan. After leading the Kings to a 2-0 series lead over the Oilers in their playoff matchup this year, Hiller played a part in shifting the momentum in his opponents’ favor with a perplexing challenge of a play the on-ice officials had already reviewed and ruled a goal. In doing so, he granted the Oilers a free power play, which they used to score a late go-ahead goal, and with it, gain the boost they needed to win the next four games. Ouch.
ROOKIES
The Kings don’t really have any rookies who are legitimately pushing for spots at this time, with the possible exception of Andre Lee, a 6-foot-5 winger who skated in 19 games with the big club last season. Lee, 25, was a seventh-round pick of the Kings back in 2019 and has followed a circuitous path to reach this point in his career, having played primarily in a bottom-six role with the AHL’s Ontario Reign over the last three seasons.
A product of Karlstad, Sweden, Lee projects as a fourth-line winger at the NHL level. But it would likely take injuries to one or more of Perry, Armia, and Warren Foegele for him to see sustained action with the Kings this year. He racked up a goal and two assists while averaging 9:10 of ice time per night during his brief stint in L.A. last year.
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. Has this group already peaked? The Kings have long been touted as one of the most promising young teams in the NHL, but it’s probably appropriate to start asking just how much upside this group has to show for itself. How will these Kings cope with the eventual departures of Kopitar and Doughty? With how much they’ve already struggled to get past the Oilers in recent years, is it realistic to expect a major change if their existing core remains intact? They’re not an old team, but their pipeline is already pretty depleted and guys like Kempe and Fiala are essentially finished products. It’s up to Byfield and Clarke to prove these Kings aren’t what we think they are.
2. Who’s the top dog on D? Doughty is getting a little long in the tooth, but he’s still more than capable of eating a ton of minutes and providing value at both ends of the ice. Anderson is one of the more underrated defensive stalwarts in the league but doesn’t have quite as much offensive pop as some of his peers. And then there’s Clarke, who has long had his fair share of detractors but is undeniably talented and due for greater deployment as he enters his second full season. Without Gavrikov, there’ll be even more pressure on these three to carry the mail for the Kings.
3. What’s next for Kempe? The Kings have a few key players entering the final years of their deals, including Kopitar, Clarke, and Kuzmenko, but the biggest one is Kempe, who has gradually developed from a bottom-six utility piece to a shoot-first star in Los Angeles. Kempe has 139 goals over his last four seasons and has only missed 10 games over that span. He consistently shows up in the playoffs, even when his teammates don’t, and his current $5.5 million cap hit is a steal for the Kings. If he wants to stay in L.A., he’ll be paid handsomely to lead the charge on offense for years to come.
PREDICTION
If there’s one saving grace for these Kings, it’s that the Pacific Division is bad — real bad. Beyond the Oilers and Vegas Golden Knights, every other team in that group is a different shade of beige. But there’s little doubt the Kings got worse on paper this offseason, and they’ll need a big year from their young guns to offset the changes to their roster. Gavrikov is gone, Kopitar and Doughty will be one year older, and, as good as he is, it’s probably fair to expect Kuemper to regress.
Only three Pacific teams reached the postseason last year. We’ll say the same happens in 2025-26, but this time, the Kings will fall out of the playoff picture — and after facing the same opponent in the first round in four consecutive years, the Oilers will take on one of their Canadian rivals instead.
Advanced stats courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and MoneyPuck
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