Joel Edmundson(Jacob Moverare) - Brandt Clarke
The final pairing will be a little more fluid but the one constant needs to be Brandt Clarke. The Kings this season have typically had seven defensemen active for games, and that seventh defenseman should be Jacob Moverare. He should split minutes with Joel Edmundson, along with moving up at times to be paired with Jordan Spence.
However, Edmundson and Moverare seem like perfect fits alongside Brandt Clarke, and it is a way to get Clarke back into having a consistent role in this defense.
Clarke started out incredibly this season with 10 assists in the first 11 games, but as the season has gone along, his ice time has steadily decreased to only about 12 minutes over his last eight games. At this point in his career, he should be getting around 15 minutes, and he has shown he can be effective with that.
When Clarke was at his best, he was playing alongside Joel Edmundson and this season, they have had over 525 minutes of ice time with a xGoals % of 53.5%, which is not far off from Mikey Anderson-Vladislav Gavrikov's xGoals % of 56.4%. Meanwhile, Moverare and Clarke have played around 60 minutes together and have a strong xGoals % of 60%, so rotating Moverare in wouldn't necessarily result in much of a decrease in performance.
The Los Angeles Kings certainly could look to trade one of their defensemen before Friday's deadline and that would help eliminate some of the issues. However, if they don't these pairings would make a lot of sense and put their best defense on the ice every night.