The Los Angeles Kings are headed back to the postseason for the second consecutive season. This is the first time since they made the playoffs for five straight seasons between 2009-10 and 2013-14 that they have qualified for the NHL’s tournament for the Stanley Cup. There were questions about if this team could make it early in the season, but clinching a spot in playoffs felt like an inevitability for at least the last two months. Let’s look at four key reasons why they were able to clinch their spot in their last game.
Development of Young Players
The Kings were in desperate need for a youth injection after many of their players from the Cup years had gotten older. They kept the core players, but had to say goodbye to key contributors and fan favorites like Alec Martinez, Jeff Carter and Tyler Toffoli. This was a necessary step of the rebuild, as it brought in assets in the form of prospects and draft picks. It also cleared space for prospects already in the organization to get into the lineup.
The young players that have gotten into the lineup have been big contributors to the Kings’ success this season. Gabriel Vilardi broke out this season at age 23, scoring 23 goals. He had only scored 18 goals over the course his 89-game career prior to this campaign. This definitely was an added boost that the Kings weren’t necessarily counting on heading into this year.
Another player who has made a leap is 20-year-old Quinton Byfield. It’s not as obvious from the counting stats as Vilardi’s leap, but if you dig deep you can see it from Byfield. He got a new role playing on the first line left wing near the start of 2023. Since Jan. 1, Byfield is 14th in the league in 5-on-5 assists per 60 minutes. His line with Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe has scored 75.7 percent of the goals, the best of any line that has accumulated at least 200 shot attempts.
The team has also gotten production from young players on the bottom six. Arthur Kaliyev, Carl Grundstrom and Blake Lizotte have combined for 35 goals this season. All three are 25 or younger. Rasmus Kupari and Jaret Anderson-Dolan have also chipped in with some goals, and are also under 25.
On defense, youngsters Mikey Anderson and Sean Durzi have been regulars on the blue line. They’ve both been very solid and have outperformed some veteran defensemen on the team. Anderson did well enough to earn a contract extension. Durzi has been a part of the second power-play unit that has been successful, and has racked up 17 power-play points. Speaking of which, the power play has also been a key part of the Kings being a playoff team this season.
Elite Power Play
The power play has not been an area of success for the Kings in recent years. In the salary cap era, they rank 24th out of 32 teams with the man advantage. Even the last time they won the Cup in the 2013-14 season, they were 27th out of 30 teams in power-play success rate. Last season, their power play was the worst of any team that made the playoffs. This was clearly an area where they needed to improve, and they addressed it in the offseason.
Things have changed dramatically for the better this season. Now, the Kings have the fourth-best power play in the league, only behind clubs with elite talent in the Edmonton Oilers, Colorado Avalanche and Toronto Maple Leafs. The addition of Kevin Fiala has done wonders for the team on the power play. He’s tied for team lead in power-play points with 24. The second unit has produced its fair share of goals as well, with Phillip Danault fourth on the team with 20 points with the man advantage. Durzi is sixth, tied with Kempe. This shows that they have enough firepower to ice two strong units, and the depth has been a huge part of the team qualifying for playoffs.
Contributions Throughout the Lineup
Those young players scoring on the bottom six have helped the Kings have one of the deepest forward groups in the league. They have five players with over 20 goals. Danault could also get there as he has 18 goals with five games in the season. A few other players like Kaliyev and Alex Iafallo could have gotten to 20 if they hadn’t missed time with injury. Regardless of whether or not they score, all the forwards have an important role to play on the team.
Related: Kings Scoring Due to Depth and Power Play
The way coach Todd McLellan deploys the lines is very calculated and structured. He likes to use the second line, centered by Danualt, as a matchup line to shut down the opposition’s best scorers. Danualt often starts shifts in the defensive zone and has defensively responsible wingers like Trevor Moore and Viktor Arvidsson with him. The first line is effective at scoring goals, but also isn’t giving up much defensively, being centered by Kopitar. The third line is where Fiala has played a lot of the time, which gives it more of an offensive punch than most third lines in the league. The fourth line gives the team a lot of energy when they are on the ice, while also being able to score a decent amount of goals.
The Kings can feel comfortable with any of these lines on the ice in most situations. They don’t have one group of forwards that is a liability when on the ice. This is useful for teams wanting to go on long playoff runs, because if one line isn’t clicking, the others can pick up the slack. It certainly has benefited the team along their way to having a successful regular season.
Goaltending Finding Consistency
The theme of the season has been the team’s goaltending. It started off poorly, and was clearly a weakness. The overall numbers still don’t look good; the team has the seventh-worst overall save percentage in the league. That is an improvement from where it was for most of the season, as it ranked either last or second-to-last for the majority of the year. The two goaltenders they have in place now have actually given the team some stability in net.
The Kings acquired Joonas Korpisalo in their big trade deadline move, and he’s been great. His play and the improvement of Pheonix Copley led the team to a 9-2-2 record in March. Korpisalo has saved 9.46 goals above expected in eight games with the team, which is a metric that measures how likely a goal is to happen based on the danger of the shot. Copley is now comfortably above negative in this metric for the season as well, sitting at 4.43. It was never going to be perfect, but the way the Kings have pieced together their goaltending has worked as well as anyone could have hoped for realistically. Their play specifically in the last month was a big reason for the Kings’ charge up the standings.
A Western Conference Contender
These things all bode well for the Kings moving forward. With the Western Conference wide open, they should like their chances to represent the conference in the Stanley Cup Final. MoneyPuck’s model gives them a 7.8 percent chance of doing that, the third-best odds in the conference. If they have all four of these things working, it is definitely possible for them to do just that.
