LA Kings: Five most important players for 2021 season
Here are the five players whose performance will be the most important to the LA Kings in 2021.
Though nothing official has been announced yet as there are still complicated details and logistics that need to be ironed out, all indications are that the LA Kings and the NHL are on track to begin an abbreviated season sometime in January amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
As one of seven teams who did not make the cut for last year’s expanded postseason when play resumed in the summer, it’s been a long time since the LA Kings last played. If the season does indeed start in January, they’ll have gone about 10 months in between regular season games.
But while excitement may be high to finally get back on the ice, expectations are pretty low for the rebuilding Kings, who are coming off a 14th-place finish in the Western Conference and a quiet offseason.
Sure, every NHL season has teams that surprise, and those may be even more likely to happen in a shortened season being played under bizarre circumstances. While you never know what can happen, the success of the Kings’ season likely won’t be judged on how many games they win.
Rather, it will more so be the performance of certain players that determine how good the Kings are feeling about their progress at the end of the season. Here are five players in particular who the Kings’ brass will be watching closely this season.
Cal Petersen
Jonathan Quick still has three years left on a contract that carries a $5.8 million cap hit per season, but he turns 35 in January and his days as an above-average netminder look like they may be over. His .904 save percentage last season was an improvement on the atrocious .888 mark he posted the previous year, but still not particularly good.
The Kings have not yet shown a willingness to buy out their iconic goalie, the way the New York Rangers did with Henrik Lundqvist in September. Quick’s contract, age, and recent performance also make him pretty much untradeable at the moment.
So, the best path forward for the Kings might be if Cal Petersen can play well enough to justify at least splitting the crease with Quick and hope the veteran’s play can improve with a lighter workload.
The 26-year-old Petersen has shown promise in limited NHL action, owning a .923 save percentage in 19 games with the Kings over the past two seasons. He was expected to get a good amount of playing time toward the end of last year after Jack Campbell was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in part to make room for Petersen. But the pandemic cut the Kings’ season short.
It is time for the Kings to begin figuring out what their post-Quick goaltending situation will look like. Petersen will get the first crack at showing he should be part of those plans.
Quinton Byfield
Expectations will always be high for a player drafted as high as Quinton Byfield was, but Kings fans should be patient with the 18-year-old if he makes the team this season.
Comparisons to Ottawa Senators rookie forward Tim Stuetzle seem inevitable. After all, he was the other player considered to be a possibility for the Kings with the second-overall pick, but they decided to go with the big center from the Sudbury Wolves in Byfield.
It’s important to remember, though, that Stuetzle is seven months older than Byfield and has experience playing professionally against men in Germany. Byfield has tremendous upside but was also considered rawer.
If Stuetzle has the better rookie season, it doesn’t mean we should already say the Kings made the wrong choice. Rather than comparing Byfield to Stuetzle or Alexis Lafrenière or anyone else, the best way to judge Byfield’s rookie season will be how much better he is at the end of it than he was at the start of it.
Byfield is the crown jewel of the Kings’ rebuild, and he’ll have plenty of eyes on him, but he doesn’t need to win the Calder (Trophy) for LA to feel good about his rookie season.
First things first, though — after a quiet showing at last year’s World Juniors, Byfield needs to put together a dominant performance for Canada at this year’s tournament to show the Kings he’s ready for the next level.
Gabriel Vilardi
After being selected 11th overall by the Kings in the 2017 draft, Gabriel Vilardi was plagued by back injuries that seemed to be threatening a promising career. Fortunately, he seems to be over them.
Finally able to get back on the ice last season, Vilardi had a strong showing in the AHL with the Ontario Reign, scoring nine goals and 25 points in 32 games. He then got called up to the NHL and scored a goal in his first shift, adding an assist later on in a memorable debut.
It was a real feel-good moment after all Vilardi had been through. He kept up the impressive play, too, finishing with three goals and a very respectable seven points in 10 games with the Kings last season.
Before the back issues that sidelined him for so long and caused him to fall off the radar a bit, Vilardi was a very highly-touted prospect. He’s still just 21, and him showing his health issues are in the past and re-establishing himself as a big part of the Kings’ future would certainly be a very positive development for this season.
Adrian Kempe
The Kings still believe 2014 first-round pick Adrian Kempe has more to give, but they may be running of patience waiting for him to show it.
Kempe is fast and skilled, but his offensive production has been extremely inconsistent. He has flashes of brilliance where he’ll score some highlight-reel goals but is also prone to falling into deep slumps.
For example, he finished last season with just one goal in his final 24 games, and that goal was in 3-on-3 overtime.
This is a crucial season for Kempe. He needs to find more consistency. The Kings have been waiting a long time for him to break out, and the 24-year-old may be running out of chances to convince them that he should be part of their core moving forward.
Drew Doughty
When the Kings decided amidst the smoldering wreckage of their 2018-19 season that it was time to rebuild, they put a for sale sign on just about everyone other than Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty.
Those were the two veteran pillars they identified as players they wanted to rebuild around. The Kings wanted them to help bring the young players along and were betting on them still being able to play at a high level when the team was ready to contend again.
So far, Kopitar has held up his end of the deal. Even as the Kings have spent the last two seasons in the NHL’s basement, Kopitar has continued to be one of the game’s premier two-way centers.
Doughty, though, has not played at the same elite level over the last two years that Kings fans had become accustomed to. His offensive production has dipped, his possession metrics have taken a hit, and his minus-50 rating over the last two seasons is the worst of any defenseman in the league.
You can put some blame on the fact that he’s had to log heavy minutes on bad teams, that he hasn’t had great partners, and that the Kings’ blue line just isn’t very good anymore. Especially after trading away long-time staples like Jake Muzzin and Alec Martinez.
When you’re making $11 million per season, though, people aren’t eager to make excuses for you. The Kings will again have a defense corps this year that isn’t very experienced or, frankly, talented.
Regardless, for that kind of money, the Kings are expecting Doughty to be in the Norris conversation year in and year out. He’s still only 31 – two years younger than Kopitar – and with seven seasons still to go on that monster contract, the Kings need him to get back to that level.
For all Doughty’s accomplished in his career, he should be coming into this season feeling like he still has something to prove – that he’s still amongst the game’s elite defensemen.