Los Angeles Kings 2015-16 Season Primer

Looking at the Los Angeles Kings heading into this season – outlook, potential lines, roster, top prospects, draft history, stats and season schedule.

2014-15 record: 40-27-15, 95 points
Where they finished: 4th in the Pacific Division, 9th in the Western Conference, 18th in NHL.

Total Cap Hit: $66,555,227
Total Salary: $71,165,834
Cap Space: $4,844,773
Source: General Fanager

In: Damir Sharipzyanov (FA), Christian Ehrhoff, D (FA – Pit), Jhonas Enroth, G (FA – Dal), Milan Lucic, LW (T – Bos)

Out: Jarret Stoll, C (FA – NYR), Andrew Bodnarchuk, D (FA – CBJ), Andrej Sekera, D (FA – Edm), Bud Holloway, RW (FA – Mtl), Justin Williams, RW (FA – Wsh), Colin Miller, D (T – Bos), Martin Jones, G (T – Bos), Robyn Regehr, D (Retired)

Source: Sports Forecaster 

Outlook for the Season:

Many were surprised when the 2014-2015 L.A. Kings roster failed to reach the playoffs — and it’s entirely possible that the luck aspect of hockey played into that in a big way.

Still, the Pacific Division club did themselves few favors throughout the year. Upon the league granting them cap relief for defenseman Slava Voynov’s cap hit mid-way through the year, general manager Dean Lombardi opted not to use the extra cash to bring on blue line reinforcements. He took a gamble on the team’s top two remaining blue liners, Drew Doughty and Alec Martinez, having the capability to hold down the back end of the lineup — but that gamble went sour with injuries to Martinez and trouble on the offensive front. Severe regression from cap-eating monster Mike Richards and a broken foot for highly touted rookie Tanner Pearson certainly didn’t help the club in their quest for success last year. That made the risky moves Lombardi opted to make, ended up  hurting the club in the end.

It’s tough to really look forward at the Kings now for the same reason — Lombardi is still taking high-stakes (if somewhat well calculated) risks, and two of the biggest ones may come back to haunt him before the season even begins. There’s no guarantee that Voynov will be able to return to the lineup — he’s currently in the process of being investigated by the ICE and may be deported, which means his roster spot and $4.2 million cap hit are still in limbo. Add in the NHLPA’s current case to override Richards’ contract termination this summer, and that’s over $10 million in cap space that the Kings can’t really play with right now — that’s quite a chunk of change to be uncertain about.

There’s a chance that the Kings will still be better next year than they were this past season. Backup netminder Martin Jones was dealt to the Boston Bruins (who flipped him to the San Jose Sharks) during the NHL Draft, and in his place is undersized (and quite possibly underrated) Swedish goaltender Jhonas Enroth. Justin Williams left via free agency. Power forward Milan Lucic was part of the return for Jones and he should inject scoring back into the lineup despite Williams’ departure. Robyn Regehr has been replaced by veteran Christian Ehrhoff and Tanner Pearson should be able to play a full season. The idea that the Kings will continue to struggle is neglecting to appreciate some of the good things LA will have going for them next year.

To suggest that Lombardi is shooting blind fails to acknowledge that each move the tenured GM has made is well thought out and logical. Still, Lombardi is a risk taker and that may end up hurting him — this year, the Kings will need to be very good to make all his gambles worthwhile.

The team won’t have a first round selection this year regardless of whether they see post-season action or not (the lottery protected pick sent to Carolina for defenseman Andrej Sekera was moved back a year by the team’s failure to reach the playoffs in 2015) and they gave away the lottery-protected pick they kept this year in the trade for Lucic. Two of the club’s most highly regarded defensive prospects, Roland McKeown and Colin Miller, were shipped out alongside those two first round selections Lombardi dealt away. There’s no guarantee that Lucic will return after the 2015-2016 season, and Anze Kopitar could become very expensive by next summer. The Kings still have talent in every age range (from veterans like Kopitar and Jeff Carter to young stars like Martinez and Tyler Toffoli) that should prevent them from bottoming out any time soon, but they do need to win this year to make all of Lombardi’s calculated moves pay off the way they should. Add in that some of his moves (most notably the Richards contract termination) are out of his control at this point, and there’s a chance that things could go quite sour for the Kings without much surprise.

Trending Up

Tyler Toffoli (RW) At 23 years old, Tyler Toffoli has quickly become one of the most highly regarded wingers in the game already. Drafted 47th overall in 2010, the Toronto native slots in on L.A.’s top line as both an offensive weapon and a strong playmaker with the well-renowned ’70’s Line’.

23 goals in 76 regular season games are just the tip of the iceberg for Toffoli, it seems. The Kings were offensively stagnant despite recording good possession numbers (the club finished 20th in the league in goals for during their regular season campaign, but were 10th overall in shots for per game and dead last in shots against per game), and Toffoli still managed to post numbers most skaters would love to post in a good year. He’s smart and surprisingly mature for a young player, quickly rising through the league’s ranks as one of the most accurate and lethal shooters around. He’s got an impressive read of the game — you’ll rarely see Toffoli make a mistake when it comes to passing or shooting — and he’s only poised to get better. For a first round pick, Toffoli would be considered a success — as a late second round selection, he’s very clearly a steal.

Alec Martinez (LD) Although Drew Doughty is the Los Angeles defenseman most often talked about around the NHL, Alec Martinez deserves plenty of credit on his own. At 28, it may seem surprising to include Martinez on a list of players who are ‘trending up’ — but the former NCAA standout, once lauded as the best defensive defenseman in the CCHA, has the power to be a game changer in all situations for the Kings next year.

Martinez was limited to only 56 games during the 2014-2015 season, and that was especially disappointing — after the American-born blue liner scored the Stanley Cup winning goal last summer, it seemed that the consistency issues many had wondered about were finally starting to fade into the background. Even over a partial season, though, it’s clear that Martinez — like Toffoli — was one of the players keeping the Kings in the conversation by exceeding expectations each and every shift. He finished the year with 103 SOG despite playing only a partial season, and it paid off — those offensive issues the Kings were having certainly didn’t deserve to be pinned on Martinez. If he can stay healthy for an entire year, the Kings may not even need to see Martinez round out his game with more physical play — the way that he’s developed and improved in all situations is enough to suggest he’s getting more valuable over time.

Trending Down:

Dustin Brown (RW) The Los Angeles Kings and the Arizona Coyotes may be bitter rivals, but the two teams do have something significant in common — both clubs are looking at diminishing value from their respective team captains. Like Shane Doan, Dustin Brown is coming off of his worse statistical season since his rookie year — and at 30, it’s unlikely that’s going to be an exception rather than an early indication of a trend.

In the last three years, Brown has seen his scoring upside drop somewhat significantly. In his defense, the depth chart has shifted to give the US Olympic Team Member less ice time each season; still, all the numbers have pointed to play regression no matter how you look at it. Lower shots attempted have resulted in a lower number of shots recorded (although the right wing’s percentage of shots attempted that end up on target hasn’t really diminished much) and a lower shooting percentage hurts him that much more. Poor giveaway numbers and a lower percentage of his time spent physically engaging on the ice means that Brown is getting worse, slowly but surely, in both scoring/possession numbers and in physical play. It’s understandable and expected, but something to watch out for nonetheless.

Christian Ehrhoff (LD) It’s actually kind of hard to find Kings players who are actively trending down, because the club has moved out nearly all of their oldest (and declining) players in the off-season this year. That leaves 33 year old Ehrhoff, who is still useful but no longer a top pairing guy, as the club’s other skater to watch for regression.

Drafted in the 4th round of the 2001 NHL Entry Draft by San Jose, Ehrhoff isn’t likely to score 14 goals for the Kings next year. They may not need that, but he’s being brought on to replace a recently retired Robyn Regehr — and he doesn’t have the puck-clearing efficiency that Regehr did in his prime, which makes this a move that runs the risk of being almost completely lateral in nature. Rather than getting younger with Regehr’s replacement — or holding on to Sekera in the off-season — the club picked up an aging asset in a move that isn’t ‘bad’, but could have been better. The hope for the Kings is that Ehrhoff will play almost exactly like he did last year, because any noticeable regression from him will leave them struggling once again to compensate for problems on the blue line.

Trade Deadline Outlook:

The Kings are especially hard to look at right now because of both the Slava Voynov and Mike Richards issues. On one hand, there’s the problem of the Kings terminating Richards’ contract in a move that the NHLPA seems adamant about fighting — but on the other hand, Voynov is still a giant question mark that actually impacts more than just cap space. Richards was declining at an almost unreal rate; Voynov is still of value to the club from a statistical standpoint.

There’s no guarantee that Voynov won’t be deported, which would leave the Kings with plenty of cap space (but a missing top pairing player). If he does stay in the United States, though, the Kings made it hard to justify keeping the blue liner on the roster when they terminated Richards’ contract for a narcotics charge this summer. Terminating one player with a bad contract for contraband painkillers, but retaining a player who’s just now finishing up his jail sentence for a fairly horrific domestic abuse case, is an issue that crosses the line between good asset management and poor social statements. Needless to say, the Kings won’t be able to look at making any big moves until these two situations have been resolved.

That makes them sitting ducks for now, but there are still certain options that the Kings can at least begin to consider heading into the year. By the trade deadline, the club will need to make a clear decision; they can either go all-in and fight for a third Stanley Cup a la Chicago Blackhawks, or they can start to replace the assets they’ve shipped out in recent years to help them win now.

Replacing their blue line prospect depth will need to be addressed sooner or later (although the team did start restocking at the 2015 Draft with their second round selection, and they did ink Nizhnekamsk native Damir Sharipzyanov following an impressive season with the Owen Sound Attack). There’s also the sense that the club will need to address the problem of both Kopitar and Lucic hitting free agency over the summer, although a ‘win now’ mode means that neither player will be touched — only look for the team to find a solution that involves shipping out Lucic if there doesn’t seem to be a chance of seeing the post-season. Instead, look for a move to put the club in a better position to afford extensions financially — which will depend on how the team’s skaters succeed leading up to the deadline.

Projected 2015-16 Range: Bubble team. The Kings could be successful, but they’ll realistically be just on the cusp of the post-season (either looking in from the outside or sitting around a wild card spot). They’ll likely be beneficiaries of the regressing Vancouver Canucks, though, and it’s unlikely that the Coyotes or Oilers will be competitive enough to knock them down out of fourth in the division.

Written by Catherine Silverman, who can be found on twitter @CataCarryOn

Kings: Outlook | Lines and Roster | Top Prospects | Draft History | Stats | Schedule

Potential line combinations, defensive pairings, and goalies.

Milan Lucic – Anze Kopitar – Marian Gaborik
Tanner Pearson – Jeff Carter – Tyler Toffoli
Dwight King – Nick Shore – Dustin Brown
Kyle Clifford – Trevor Lewis – Jordan Nolan
Jordan Weal – Andy Andreoff

Jake Muzzin – Drew Doughty
Christian Ehrhoff – Matt Greene
Alec Martinez – Brayden McNabb
Jeff Schultz

Jonathan Quick
Jhonas Enroth

Kings: Outlook | Lines and Roster | Top Prospects | Draft History | Stats | Schedule

Some top Los Angeles Kings prospect lists heading into the season.

* Different sites have different guidelines for who is a ‘prospect.’

1. Adrian Kempe: Left Wing – 6’2” / 187 lbs – After being selected in the first round by the Kings in ’14, Kempe made a strong impression at training camp but ultimately was assigned to Modo. Kempe was dominant for Sweden at the WJC scoring four goals and eight points in six games and finished his season off with Manchester, helping them to a Calder Cup Championship with nine points in 17 games. Kempe likely begins the season in the AHL but it won’t be long before he works his way onto the Kings roster.

2. Jordan Weal: Centre -5’10” / 179 lbs – The 23 year old centre has completed his third season in the AHL and has established himself as a legitimate offensive threat with 69 points in 73 regular season games. Weal raised his game to another level in the post season scoring at 1.16 points per game pace with 22 points in 19 games leading his team to a Calder Cup Championship. The obvious knock on his game is his size, but while small he is a prolific offensive threat, responsible defensively and has a strong work ethic. Weal was recalled last season and even participating in the pregame warm up before being a last minute scratch. He was a late preseason roster cut and has an outside chance of winning a roster spot this year but is likely trade bait as he could be on several other teams opening night rosters.

3. Valentin Zykov: Right Wing – 6’0” / 209 lbs – Zykov had a difficult season, his point totals in his final year of junior dipped slightly, and he was traded and missed out on the WJC due to injury. Despite that, he was signed by the Kings to his entry level contract and could turn pro this year with the Reign.  Physically he is ready to turn pro and has little left to learn at the junior level.

4. Derek Forbort: Defence – 6’4” / 212 lbs – Forbort has become somewhat of a forgotten asset as he has been slow to develop. The Kings have been patient with his development and allowed him to take his time in college and in the AHL. After three seasons with Manchester he has really refined his game. He has established his defensive effectiveness, improved his physical play and maintained some offensive upside as well as developed some leadership qualities through his experience. This should be the year he transitions to the NHL, either for opening night, or via a mid-season call up.

5. Michael Mersch:  Left Wing -6’2” / 198 lbs – After a successful college career, Mersch had a very impressive rookie pro season leading the Monarchs in goals and tied for the team lead in points in the playoffs leading them to a Calder Cup Championship. He made a big jump in his development and has established himself as a key prospect for the near future. He should see another season in the AHL as the Kings forward ranks have few vacancies, but given his entry level contract and the Kings cap restrictions he could force some turnover to make room soon.

Expanded Top 10 Los Angeles Kings prospects with videos and stats can be read here.

Kings: Outlook | Lines and Roster | Top Prospects | Draft History | Stats | Schedule

A look at the Los Angeles Kings drafting from 2010 to 2015.

Kings: Outlook | Lines and Roster | Top Prospects | Draft History | Stats | Schedule

Los Angeles Kings 2014-15 player stats.

Kings: Outlook | Lines and Roster | Top Prospects | Draft History | Stats | Schedule

A look at the Los Angeles Kings 2015-16 schedule.

Kings: Outlook | Lines and Roster | Top Prospects | Draft History | Stats | Schedule