With Kevin Fiala now ruled out for the remainder of the Olympics and the 2025-26 regular season, it's fair to not only assume that Switzerland's previously-decent medal chances might be chased, but that the Los Angeles Kings could very well suffer the consequences of the injury as well.
I'm not going to say much about the injury at the end of the Canada-Switzerland game. But for those of you that didn't watch, all I will say is that the injury was unwatchable.
More on the Kings in a bit. With regard to Switzerland, Fiala's injury is a devastating blow to their attack; Kevin Fiala was playing on the top line for much of the tournament thus far. In addition, Switzerland was arguably seen as one of the best teams heading into the tournament and a potential medal contender.
It will be interesting to see how Switzerland responds and whether the team's leadership can rally the troops and go on a deep tournament run. Though the Swiss did beat Czechia by a score of 4-3 in the first game following Kevin Fiala's season-and-tournament-ending injury, they will have to win three games in the knockouts to be guaranteed a medal instead of the two they would have been required to win had they earned a bye to the quarterfinals.
That said, they do have a doable path to the medal round games. As a second-place team in group play, Switzerland will have the benefit of playing a fourth-place team in the playoffs. Even better for the Swiss is that the team in question is going to be Italy, who didn't exactly have the greatest group stage run. In their group stage run, Italy lost all three of their games, scored just four goals while conceding nineteen.
Should they beat Italy, Switzerland would play Finland in the quarterfinals before potentially playing one of the United States or Canada in the semifinal round. At this point, getting to a medal game would be a remarkable turnaround for a Swiss team reeling from the devastating loss of Kevin Fiala.
As for the Los Angeles Kings, that's where things get a little more dire.
We all know about the Kings' inability to score and produce offensive chances - the Kings are 31st in the NHL in total points and 30th in the league in goals per game. What stands out more is that Kevin Fiala has the third-highest point total so far this season (including Artemi Panarin). Take Fiala out of the picture, and there is a sixteen-point gap between the Kings' second-highest (Adrian Kempe) and fourth-highest point scorer (Quinton Byfield).
Though the offensive depth is spread out through the Kings' top three lines, only four Los Angeles players (including Kevin Fiala) have thirty or more points on the season as of this moment. Even with the addition of Artemi Panarin, losing Kevin Fiala to injury all but offsets any gain from the trade.
So where does Los Angeles go from here? A few rumours have connected the Kings to Steven Stamkos of the Nashville Predators, but it remains to be seen whether the Kings would sacrifice a key roster piece or significant draft capital (the Kings have nine picks in this year's draft) to bring in one of the league's top goal scorers. We're also talking about a team that wants to contend but in reality can only do so to 50% of their abilities due to an abysmal offence. It's also worth noting that Nashville is pursuing a playoff spot of their own; they entered the break four points back of the final wild card spot.
Both Switzerland and the Los Angeles Kings had their work cut out for them heading into the Olympics/Olympic break. Even though the Swiss were seen as a medal contender, Canada and the United States were the most likely teams to make it to the gold medal game; even before the injury, other teams like Slovakia asserted themselves as likelier teams to contend for a medal.
After the events of the past few weeks, that work is only going to get more cut out.