LAK AT 7: AN ILL-FITTING PUZZLE

LOS ANGELES, CA — As the Los Angeles Kings prepared to open the season without the best defenseman in franchise history, Drew Doughty, and with an unprecedented seven-game roadtrip waiting, the initial question in a pivotal 2024-25 season was less about thriving and more about surviving.

The seven games away from Crypto.com Arena was not as arduous as the 17-day journey away from home – which commenced with two preseason games in Quebec – as first appeared. The trip came in two stages: the first, a five-game segment that started in Buffalo and ended in Montreal, and a two-game stint after the team returned to its Southern California home for two games at Anaheim and Vegas.

With significant changes to a team that lacks the ability to win in the playoffs over the past decade, combined with the void created by Doughty’s preseason injury – a broken ankle that will have him miss close to half the season – opening their home schedule Thursday night against the San Jose Sharks with a 3-2-2 record would thought to be a positive.

There were doomsayers that predicted a rough patch on visiting ice to start, and given how Los Angeles plays in Buffalo, the opening night victory over the Sabres alone was a skate in the right direction regardless of the results of the next six. Eight points in seven road games is perfectly acceptable but the way the Kings arrived at that point total should not dissuade those who think regression is at hand.

They beat the teams that needed to beat – Anaheim and Montreal are inferior teams – and their games in Boston always result in an overtime match. What is troublesome is the subpar defensive performance against three teams with gifted offenses – Ottawa, Toronto and Vegas. Granted that a seven-game sample in a season of 82 games is small for a team trying to find its identity, but yielding 20 goals in those three games (all losses but earning a point against Ottawa) isn’t what playoff teams are about.

Make no mistake, defense is a six-player product; you just can’t lay it on the blueline for the deficiencies. A team needs to be a connected group when defending – there is as much accountability from the forwards needed as there is from defensemen, but as the second to last line of defense, the blueliners will always get a higher proportional share of blame when the goal lamp is lit in bunches.

When the skaters don’t defend well, from time to time you need a big game from your goaltender, which hasn’t occurred. In fairness, Darcy Kuemper’s early-season injury (a groin issue) pressed David Rittich into full time service with the only relief during Kuemper’s stop on injured reserve was a Pheonix Copley cameo in the Toronto loss. The goaltending hasn’t cost the Kings games, but the trio hasn’t stolen a game either. 

One bright spot: though Kuemper has a sub-.900 save percentage, his .913 save percentage at 5-on-5 play augers well when he returns soon.

The major difference between Head Coach Jim Hiller and his predecessor, Todd McLellan, is Hiller’s willingness to shake things up at a moment’s notice (he kidded with me post-game in Las Vegas that maybe he just gets bored at times and that leads to the combinations blender) and McLellan’s unwillingness to change things when the Kings were in the depth of a long streak of losing hockey ultimately gave Hiller his first NHL coaching opportunity. Flipping line combinations is nothing new in this league, it happens with every coach, and with the presence of four new forwards on the depth chart (Alex Turcotte, Tanner Jeannot, Andre Lee and Warren Foegele – Akil Thomas will be a fifth when he makes his season debut) it will take time to find the best line combinations.

The 3-2-2 start gives Hiller more time to decide on the best depth chart fits and I still believe that the 12 forwards that hit the ice this month are better than the group of forwards who played in Game 5 in Edmonton last spring.

While the goal-scoring skill isn’t appreciably better, there’s more youth, speed and size than last season. But the defense, ahh, that’s another story. I wrote in my first column of the season that if Doughty wasn’t irreplaceable, he would be the most difficult player to replace. Through seven games, that take has manifested itself and will be a recurring theme until Doughty steps back on the ice.

It's an ill-fitting puzzle of players along the Los Angeles blueline, the domino effect caused by Doughty’s absence has affected every pairing. Give Hiller credit for pulling every lever in an effort to find an effective six-man group, but some of his early decisions aren’t sustainable.

Vladislav Gavrikov played 28 minutes on his off side in the Montreal win, Brandt Clarke led the team in time-on-ice against Vegas, and Joel Edmundson and Andreas Englund combined to play almost 28 minutes on the left side – these are a few examples.

In any season’s infancy, it takes in the range of 20 games to figure out what the night-in, night-out combinations and pairings will be, so while the permutations in the lineup isn’t unusual, as the puck drops for Game 8 there are just a few positions you can write in pen and in the moment, the Kings third line centered by Turcotte is the most stable.

The changes on defense were borne out of necessity through injury, the blending of the forward combinations is by choice. To reinvent the wheel every game for 82 games isn’t reality and the need for continuity is. The return of Doughty will stabilize the defensive corps and help the offense assuming his productivity will approach his strong 2023-24 season. The forwards combinations are a different animal; the need of continuity is essential and it’s not just due to being productive on offense but to create a five-man cohesive unit on defense. With the special teams struggling (23rd on powerplay efficiency, 26th on the penalty kill), the current path to victory is at 5-on-5 play.

Thursday’s Sharks game starts a two-week run of a friendly home schedule with very winnable games, so success in these matchups should see more continuity in the lineup. And that should be the short-term goal (other than winning the games, which is always Job 1), the build towards a set lineup and the reduction of questions of who plays where and when.