Los Angeles Kings preview: Anze Kopitar leads aging LA Kings squad
The Los Angeles Kings haven’t won a playoff series in four years. Can the LA Kings, led by Anze Kopitar, bounce back?
Last season, the Los Angeles Kings made the Stanley Cup Playoffs after a one-year hiatus. Much needed systemic changes courtesy of head coach John Stevens help Anze Kopitar and the rest of the team flourish, as they made the postseason. However, all of LA Kings’ issues were in the spotlight during their first-round loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.
The Kings struggled to score goals under Darryl Sutter and the issue is still quite prevalent under Stevens. Their 239 goals scored ranked 17th in the league, making it four times in the past five seasons they have been a below average scoring team. And the one time they were above average (2015-16), they ranked 14th out of 30 teams.
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Los Angeles was quite aggressive this offseason, pursuing some of the big guns via trade, including Max Pacioretty. This shows the Kings are well aware of the issue. They lost out on Pacioretty and the other trade targets, so they’ll be banking on younger players stepping up and their core players to keep doing what they’ve been doing.
Offseason Recap
Additions: F Ilya Kovalchuk, F Zach Mitchell, D Daniel Brickley, D Alex Lintuniemi
The Kings, despite their aggressive pursuit of Pacioretty, were rather quiet after acquiring Ilya Kovalchuk. He’s done extremely well in the KHL, which is arguably the best professional league in the world other than the NHL. Even at 35 years old, Kovalchuk should provide the Kings with some much-needed goal scoring.
Mitchell played in 23 games for the Minnesota Wild last season. He should give them another depth forward option, which is never a bad thing. Brickley and Lintuniemi are both young defensemen who can move the puck. The former played in college last season while the latter emerged as a huge surprise for their AHL team, the Ontario Reign.
Stats are courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and Corsica.