The Canadian was crushed by a steamroller on Saturday. Brendan Gallagher was not wrong to call the Los Angeles Kings the team of the hour in the National Hockey League.
The Kings, unwittingly at the heart of a controversy in Quebec in recent weeks after agreeing to hold their training camp in the Old Capital for funding of 5 to 7 million, occupy fourth place in the general ranking, just two points from first, with a record of 13-3-3. They have won nine of their last eleven meetings and have still not lost in nine games on opposing ice.
Their 4-0 victory over the Canadiens was their fifth in a row, a short stretch in which they scored 20 goals and allowed… five.
Los Angeles is a particular model. After their last Stanley Cup in 2014, the Kings missed the playoffs five times, occupied the cellar of the standings for three years, but they climbed back to the top by short-circuiting their reconstruction, with three of their first four defensemen drafted after the 100th rank, a 36-year-old guard thought ripe for retirement, and a horrendous blunder with the fifth overall pick in 2019.
The Kings will nevertheless be the first to admit it: they must have success in the playoffs this spring, otherwise they will remain a club that has not made it past the first playoff round in ten years…
This team could have been looking at a complete rebuild in 2019 after a dreadful 71-point season, last place in the Western Conference and an aging club.
The Kings did so, but only partially, by hanging on to their two mainstays Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty, then 33 and 31 years old respectively, but trading in the following seasons Jeff Carter, Tyler Toffoli, Jake Muzzin and Alec Martinez for draft picks and, or, prospects.
Los Angeles has managed to build a top-tier defense with some surprising players around Doughty. His partner, 24-year-old Michael Anderson, was a fourth-round pick in 2017. Matt Roy, 28, was a seventh-round pick in 2015. They are not great offensive defensemen, but remain effective defensively in the twenty minutes that we entrust to them for each match.
Rounding out the top 4 is Vladislav Gavrikov, acquired from the Blue Jackets at last year’s trade deadline. Gavrikov is a strong guy built in the same mold, the type of defender that Marc Bergevin, now assistant to Kings general manager Rob Blake, particularly likes.
We must remember three key names on the attack in this process of reset on the fly, this expression dear to Marc Bergevin in Montreal. The acquisition of Phillip Danault for 33 million for six years in July 2021 marked the end of the reconstruction. The arrival of Danault, at 28, coupled with that of Viktor Arvidsson, 27, would allow the Kings to bridge the gap between the thirty-year-old stars of the team and the youngest recently drafted who were still a few years away from having a impact.
The late first round pick in 2014, 29th overall, forward Adrian Kempe, would also serve to solidify the team in this transition period. Kempe took five years to hit his stride, before exploding with 35 goals at age 25 in 2021-22.
Kevin Fiala completed the acceleration of the process starting in 2022 against a first-round pick (Liam Öhgren) and young defenseman Brock Faber. Rob Blake continued the exercise even further with last summer’s acquisition of 25-year-old Pierre-Luc Dubois for Gabriel Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari and a second-round pick in 2024. We’re hoping for more from Dubois , at the center of the third trio, and 11 points, including 5 goals, in 19 games, after allowing him 8.5 million per season until 2031.
The Kings are massacring their opponents these days because their big stars Kopitar and Doughty still have a big impact, the cement holds well in the middle and the younger players are starting to do well.
The second overall pick in 2020 behind Alexis Lafrenière and ahead of Tim Stützle, Quinton Byfield, is coming out of his shell at 21 years old. The 6-foot-5, 225-pound giant has 16 points in 19 games at left wing for Kopitar. He had just 10 points in 40 games in his first full season two years ago, so patience is always required with prospects.
The fifth overall pick in 2019, Alex Turcotte, is still in the AHL at 22, but the young man, son of Alfie, a first-round pick by the Canadiens in 1983, has been slowed by concussions. He has 17 points in as many games with the farm club, let’s see if he can make the Kings regret a little less one day for having preferred him to Moritz Seider, Dylan Cozens, Trevor Zegras, Matthew Boldy, Cole Caufield and company .
The Kings’ third top pick between 2019 and 2021, big right-handed defenseman Brandt Clarke, drafted 8th overall in 2021, had been tipped for a job in the NHL heading into training camp, but we preferred to let him to develop in the American League, where he outrageously dominates at the moment, at 20 years old.
Let’s wait a little before declaring victory, since the championships are not won in November, but we can nevertheless salute the team’s current successes. The main question mark remains goaltender Cameron Talbot, 36, forced out of Ottawa after a tough season but smoking after two months in Los Angeles with a 2.02 GAA and .931 save percentage, superbly served by a watertight defense.
The Oilers are still far from a playoff spot, but they just crushed two opponents, the Capitals 5-0 and the Ducks 8-2. They are thus closer to six points behind the Seattle Kraken and the last place giving access to the playoffs, with two more games to play, but they are also five points behind the Nashville Predators and the Arizona Coyotes. Connor McDavid took advantage of these two games to increase his record by… nine points. He had obtained sixteen in his previous sixteen matches. Here he is today in 16th place in the scoring rankings with 25 points, ten behind leader Nikita Kucherov. Have poolers already made the irreparable blunder of lacking patience with him?
