Kings season preview: New faces, new approach, same challenges

EL SEGUNDO –– As the Kings look to exorcise demons and overcome disappointments, they will start their campaign on a season-long, seven-game road trip, beginning befittingly Thursday in Buffalo.

Although the Sabres are riding the longest playoff drought in North American pro sports, they’ve beaten the Kings by an aggregate score of 13-0 across the last two meetings in Buffalo. They also rallied from a 3-1 deficit to topple the Kings at Crypto.com Arena last year during the perigee of the Kings’ plummet from the top of the standings to the middle of the pack, which led to a third consecutive first-round exit against the Edmonton Oilers.

Starting with the Sabres, the Kings will chart a path that they hope leads to the postseason for a fourth straight year and one that takes them to the second round for the first time since 2014.

Changes abound

Where the Kings were planning and executing in each of the prior three offseasons, this past summer was more reactive as they lost key players in free agency, remade their bottom six and jettisoned Pierre-Luc Dubois, the player they billed as the piece to put them over the top mere months earlier.

Among the Kings’ 23-man roster for opening night are, in essence, 10 new additions with six offseason acquisitions, a prospect set to make his NHL debut and three players who competed in 20 or fewer games for the club last year that will now assume more consistent roles.

In the process, they lost some scoring pop. The reviled Dubois and the beloved but oft-injured Viktor Arvidsson proved difficult to replace in terms of production. Over the past two seasons, their per-game scoring averages would have produced 55 and 64 points, respectively, over 82 games. Their replacements in the Kings’ top nine, Warren Foegele and Tanner Jeannot, averaged 20 and 38 points, respectively, per 82 games.

What Jeannot brings that Arvidsson didn’t are size and a mean streak, while Foegele’s puck production and overall effort are bound to surpass those of the blasé Dubois, despite questions about Foegele’s own consistency. But the Kings have even less firepower on paper than they did a year ago, when they scored 20 fewer goals year over year and, more alarmingly, ranked 24th in the NHL from the early season (Nov. 1) onward. While some players described the 2023-24 campaign as a step backwards or at least to the side, captain Anze Kopitar eschewed any notions of living in the very recent past.

“By looking forward, really,” said Kopitar when asked how his group could shake off last season. “If we go back and mope about that or we’re thinking about that too much – it happened, it didn’t work, and now we brought in new guys that we’re really excited about. So, we’ll look ahead and not worry about what happened last year.”

Let’s get physical

It wasn’t an Olivia Newton-John single off the oldies rack, it was an outlook for the Kings’ season as they sought to add truculence, switched up their neutral-zone forecheck scheme and made yet another change in net.

After enjoying uncommon stability between 2009 and 2023 with Jonathan Quick between the pipes, the Kings have converted their goal crease into a merry-go-round. Cal Petersen gave way to Pheonix Copley, who ceded his net to Joonas Korpisalo, who lost it to Cam Talbot, who played tug-of-war with David Rittich, who now appears to be the backup for Darcy Kuemper.

Kuemper represented the silver lining of the Dubois fiasco as he came back from Washington in exchange for Dubois. He has a prior stint with the Kings and a Stanley Cup in Colorado to his credit, but a down year and three more seasons left on his contract at age 34 to his detriment.

The Kings also ditched the 1-3-1 neutral-zone forecheck in favor of the 1-2-2, something coach Jim Hiller – now with his interim tag from last season removed – said would create speed for their forwards and help buoy their breakouts. Yet the biggest emphasis seems to be on the always-vague “becoming harder to play against” maxim, something Hiller has touted repeatedly and that tracked with the Kings’ offseason moves.

“As a team, we need to be a little bit more assertive, a little more aggressive,” Hiller said. “It’s one thing to say it, but when you add some of the people like we did and you got some reinforcements, I think that helps everybody look around and just say ‘OK, it’s not just me or you, it’s all of us now that are willing to get in there and stick up for each other.’”

Hitting the curveball

Last season, the Kings entered the year with a short roster and were helped immensely by the fact that they sustained few injuries, particularly in the early part of the campaign. This season, they have 23 players in tow, but have already encountered more misfortune than they did at this time last year.

Beleaguered forward Arthur Kaliyev’s comeback “Arty Party” had a “grand opening, grand closing” feel as one day after he spoke of seizing another opportunity, he sustained a broken collarbone. Worse still, the Kings’ do-it-all defenseman and alternate captain, Drew Doughty, fractured his ankle in a preseason game against Vegas, requiring surgery and a months-long recovery period.

Already challenged for depth after heavily diluting a once Olympic-sized prospect pool and an enviable crop of young pros, the Kings now face a lengthy period without their leader in time on ice and scoring by a defenseman, as well as their top power-play quarterback and most vocal player.

When Doughty missed significant time for the first time in his career during the 2021-22 season, the Kings brought in Sean Durzi while 2024 Calder Trophy runner-up Brock Faber was cutting his teeth at the NCAA level and the ever-steady Matt Roy was assuming a larger role. All three defensemen, as well as Sean Walker and Helge Grans, are gone from the organization, with all but Faber leaving the Kings nothing to show for their departures. As the Kings did then, they’ll look to replace Doughty by committee, with Jordan Spence assuming larger five-on-five responsibility and Brandt Clarke likely running the top power-play unit while the alternate captain Doughty heals.

“I don’t think one guy can do all that [he does], to be honest with you, and that’s why it has to be the whole D corps, and even the forwards as well, to step up being vocal in the dressing room and being a leader on the ice as well,” Spence said.

PROJECTED LINEUP

(Players in bold are new additions)

Forwards

Adrian Kempe — Anze Kopitar — Alex Laferriere

Tanner Jeannot — Phillip Danault — Trevor Moore

Kevin Fiala — Quinton Byfield — Warren Foegele

Andre Lee — Alex Turcotte — Trevor Lewis

Akil Thomas

Arthur Kaliyev (injured reserve)

Defensemen

Mikey Anderson — Jordan Spence

Vladislav Gavrikov — Kyle Burroughs

Joel Edmundson — Brandt Clarke

Andreas Englund

Caleb Jones

Drew Doughty (long-term injured reserve)

Goalies

Darcy Kuemper

David Rittich