LA Kings: Can Kurtis MacDermid survive wave of prospect pool?

Kurtis MacDermid has a role on this team for now, but will he be on the outside looking in when the LA Kings prospect pool graduates to the NHL?

Kurtis MacDermid was 5-foot-10, 150 pounds when he was drafted in the seventh round of the 2010 OHL Draft by the Owen Sound Attack. Fast forward ten years later, and the LA Kings defenseman stands at a robust 6-foot-5, 236 pounds. The 26-year-old went undrafted but signed with Kings in September 2012. After a couple of years with the Erie Otters, he joined the Ontario Reign for the 2015-2016 season, where he tallied four goals with 12 assists for 16 points in a 56-game sample size.

He was up and down between Ontario and Los Angeles during the 2017-2018 campaign, logging 34 games at the NHL level and scored his first goal just five games in against the Montreal Canadiens. MacDermid registered a career-best six hits in the Kings 4-0 victory over the Panthers on November 18.

Physicality has primarily been what has led to MacDermid sticking at the NHL level. It also helps when your team is in the midst of a rebuild, but he brings a certain physical toughness needed on this Kings roster. He’s been known to get into scraps to pump his team up, as demonstrated in his previous scraps with Milan Lucic and Brendan Smith, among others.

But going forward, you have to wonder if MacDermid has a role on this club, especially as members of the prospect pool graduate to the NHL level. This year, the Kings are expected to see Mikey Anderson, Tobias Bjornfot, and potentially Kale Clague all become regulars. With limited spots along the blue line, MacDermid is likely to become the team’s seventh defender.

Is he going to be a healthy scratch? A question that could be the beginning of his transition out of LA. Last year, MacDermid spent the most time paired with Sean Walker on the third line. He also saw a handful of games with Matt Roy on the team’s second pairing. The duo of MacDermid and Walker fell into the “bad” category in Charting Hockey’s scatter plot for expected goals for compared to expected goals against.

And aside from physicality and penalty kill, the former hasn’t really offered much else to this club.

Evolving Hockey gave him a -2.8 oGAR and a -2.1 dGAR last year, and his market value above conveys that playing MacDermid actually hurts the Kings. He’s a good shot blocker but does little to take the puck away from opposing forwards. LA lost a good combination in the shot-blocking and hit department, trading away key members like Alec Martinez and Kyle Clifford this past season.

‘Tis the nature of the beast in a rebuild. But MacDermid will continue to play until members of the prospect pool have established themselves. He just re-signed with the club on a two-year extension back in April with only a cap hit of $875,000. The Kings are paying him essentially nothing, comparatively speaking, of course, so they can afford what he offers, at this junction.

Both of the Kings’ Stanley Cup teams had that element of physicality necessary to wear down their opponents. In 2012, it was Matt Greene and Drew Doughty along the blue line. In 2014, it was Robyn Regehr, Jake Muzzin, Slava Voynov, Doughty, and Greene-all registering at least 118 hits during the regular season.

Looking at the current group of players, Matt Roy has brought those intangibles, and Doughty continues to log 100+ hits per season. But who will be the next defenseman or group of defensemen to bring that to the table? Perhaps that’s the main objective in the second round of the NHL Draft.