Los Angeles Kings: What is a successful season for Quinton Byfield?

What can Quinton Byfield to the Los Angeles Kings in a weird 2020-21 season?

When the Los Angeles Kings landed Quinton Byfield with the second overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, it felt like a happy ending for an otherwise awful 2019-20 season.

After finishing out the 2019-20 season with a 29-35-6 record – the seventh-best mark in the Pacific Division and 15th overall mark in the Western Conference as a whole – the Kings were able to finally land the proverbial missing piece that every team needs to initiate a successful rebuild, a potential franchise centerpiece power forward.

Measuring in at 6-foot-4, 214 pounds, the 18-year-old Ontario native is a World Juniors gold medalist who put up 32 goals and 50 assists during his second season with the Sudbury Wolves. While he could start out the season with the Ontario Reign, at least in theory, all signs point to Byfield making his debut sooner rather than later with the Kings in 2020-21, maybe even on opening night if all things go well.

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But, between you and me, what exactly would a successful season for Byfield look like in 2021?

Though we’ve seen highly drafted rookie forwards come into the league and record massive 20-plus goal seasons before they turn 20 in recent years – Jack Eichel, Nico Hischier, and Andrei Svechnikov all come to mind – the likelihood of that happening in the forthcoming season feels rather slim. Even if the league is able to settle on a schedule and can conduct a full preseason slate before the regular season opens up at some point in 2021, it’s improbable that teams will be able to play a full 82 game season, let alone one with inter-division contests.

Byfield has the size to be an immediate contributor in the NHL and the perfect mentor to learn from already on the Kings’ roster in 33-year-old Slovenian power forward Anze Kopitar, but how much damage can he really do if the season is only, say, 60 games? Even if Byfield averages 20 minutes of ATOI in 2021 – more than Eichel, Hischier, and Svechnikov as rookies – that’s a pretty tough ask with a quarter of the season off the books.

Then again, the Kings are going to be bad in 2020 and may opt to give extended looks to players like Byfield and Adrian Kempe if they fall out of Pacific Conference contention early on. Who knows, players like Kopitar may not even make it out of the regular season in a black and white uniform – or the team’s beyond cool ‘blue’ and gold Reverse Retros – if a deep-pocketed buyer comes calling around the trade deadline.

Granted, if the Kings do decide to start moving players at the deadline, it’ll probably be players like Alex Iafallo, Dustin Brown, or Jeff Carter, as opposed to the team’s captain, considering he’s still on the books for $40 million over the next four seasons.

If Byfield is able to crack the Kings’ top-six, presumably leapfrogging the 11th overall pick in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft, Gabriel Vilardi, 20 goals is still very much attainable, but if he’s able to simply hang, that’ll probably good enough to keep ~~putting butts in seats~~ hockey fans in LA from watching something else from the comfort of their homes.

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In a normal year, the addition of Quinton Byfield would be enough to give disappointed fans of the Los Angeles Kings a reason to tune in again six years removed from the team’s last Stanley Cup win. He’s a big, tough scorer with the potential to become a legit number one center worth building around and brings a certain star power the Kings haven’t had in quite some time. Though his rookie season surely isn’t going to be business as usual, his offensive upside is still high enough to expect a 20-plus goal performance if there are enough games to facilitate it.

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