The Los Angeles Kings Are In The Cellar For Now, But Are Poised To Return To The Top Of The NHL.
Of all the many sports teams that call Southern California home, arguably none are more underrated than the Los Angeles Kings. Few of the fans who flock to Laker or Clipper games at Staples Center know that the building is also home to one of the NHL’s most successful recent franchises. In 1988, the Kings shocked the hockey world when they acquired Wayne Gretzky in a trade with the Edmonton Oilers.
The trade for Gretzky changed the landscape of the NHL- it was a smashing success for the Kings, allowing them to draw crowds like they never had before. They reached the Stanley Cup Finals with Gretzky in 1993, but fell to the Montreal Canadiens, and never took home a trophy with the Great One- but they had established themselves as a legitimate franchise out in LA. Furthermore, they showed that West Coast (of the United States)teams were viable, leading to the creation of several more expansion teams, such as the Anaheim Ducks and the San Jose Sharks.
The Kings would have to wait nearly twenty years to achieve Stanley Cup success, but achieve it they did. In 2012, the Kings took home their inaugural Cup in six games over the New Jersey Devils, and did so again in 2014 against the New York Rangers. Both title teams were anchored by the same core of players- top defenseman Drew Doughty, powerful two-way center Anze Kopitar, tough wingers Jeff Carter and Dustin Brown, and perhaps most importantly of all star goaltender Jonathan Quick. The team looked to build on those two titles and establish a dynasty, which seemed achievable with all of the key players save Brown still in their 20s in 2014. But it was not to be.
The very next season, the Kings faltered, failing to even make the Stanley Cup playoffs. Although they would make the playoffs twice more in subsequent years, it was clear that their best years were already behind them. General Manager Dean Lombardi had built the championship core, but he had failed to supplement and build on them, making a series of bad trades and free agent signings after 2014. In 2017 both he and championship head coach Daryl Sutter were fired, and a new era was inaugurated for Los Angeles hockey.
Three years later, where do the Kings sit? The answer is, at the bottom of the Western Conference. During the 2018–19 season they had the second worst record in the West, and this year they are on pace to have the very worst. But there are positive signs, and if things cannot get at all worse from here, indications are that they should begin to get better soon in years to come.
Although Kopitar and Doughty are both still playing at an All Star caliber level in their early thirties, the core of the next championship Kings team will need to come from young players acquired in the NHL Draft. The team is off to a good start in this area- NHL draft analyst Corey Pronman gave the team an A for their 2019 draft, where they grabbed top center prospect Alex Turcotte at fifth overall, defense prospect Tobias Bjornfot at 22nd overall, and in the second round at 33rd overall snagged scoring winger Arthur Kaliyev, a first-round projected talent before the draft.
Further back in the draft, the team took another winger, Samuel Fagemo, whose stock has only increased since the draft- he recently was one of the top goal scorers for his native Sweden at the World Junior tournament. And who won that World Juniors tournament? That would be Canada, with their championship-winning goal scored by Kings prospect Akil Thomas.
The Kings have also aggressively stocked up on both picks and prospects for the upcoming 2020 Draft, to complement their own first round pick (which is projected to be at the top of the first round.) In advance of this year’s trade deadline, the Kings dealt away scoring forward Tyler Toffoli (a pending free agent) away to the Vancouver Canucks for prospect Tyler Madden (ranked 84th on TheHockeyWriters.com’s top 100 prospects list) and draft picks including an extra first rounder.
The addition of Madden gives the Kings eight prospects on that top 100, and that is before an upcoming draft where, thanks to the trades of Toffoli and defenseman Alec Martinez, the franchise will have eleven total picks. Where exactly the Kings’ own first rounder falls will be determined by the luck of the NHL lottery, but if it lands first they could be adding a talent like Alexis Lafreniere to an already very strong prospect group.
Of course, no prospect is truly a sure thing until they can prove it at the NHL level, and the Kings’ group will be no exception. But some early signs in that area are positive- on February 20 Gabriel Vilardi, who at one time was considered the brightest star of the Kings youth movement before missing significant time with back injuries, made his long-awaited NHL debut. In it, he scored his first goal on his very first shot against the Florida Panthers. Kings fans will hope that that is a sign of the future not only for him, but for the prospects such as Turcotte, Kaliyev, Madden and more who will hopefully follow him to the NHL soon.
Kings fans have gotten used to winning over the past thirty years since the Gretzky trade, and these past few seasons of being cellar dwellers have no doubt been a bitter pill to swallow. But better things seem well and truly to be ahead, and within a few years the Kings’ prospects of tomorrow should be contributing to their next run at a championship. The Kings’ California rivals, the Ducks and Sharks, are themselves staring at painful rebuilds after years of playoff contention, but the Kings may be poised to come back stronger than any of them.
