INSIDER - Quarter-Season Evaluation

22 games into the season, so I suppose this is a game late.

But we've reached the quarter-mark of the season. It's about that time, with American Thanksgiving approaching, that we begin to learn about what teams are. The Kings are in many ways the team that was expected, but they haven't been the best version of that team. There are stretches, games, spurts.....but it hasn't been there consistently, even if stylistically, there haven't been all that many surprises.

This article is not meant to look at one game or one homestand, so it isn't reactionary to last night or recent performances. It's meant to look at the start of the season as a whole, to assess key storylines from the first 20+ games. Sunday, when the Kings return to practice, will have more of a focus on the here and now, with some changes expected, certainly on the power play.

3 Up
Road Warriors
Well, well, well, how the turntables……

Last season, when you looked at the home/road splits, the Kings were 15th of the 16 playoff teams in terms of road performance. They were below .500 away from Los Angeles. This season, the Kings lead the NHL with 21 points on the road and are tied for the NHL lead with nine road victories.

Just how it goes, I guess.

I’ve asked a number of players on the team about it and ultimately, there isn’t a massive rhyme or reason to the differences. Joel Edmundson offered what I felt was the best explanation, in that the Kings struggled on the road last season, so perhaps this year, there’s a mindset of just coming in and playing a simple game as a result. Don't try and do too much. The Kings are probably at their best when they just play that North/South style of game. They’ve rarely beat themselves on the road this season. They’ve just played their game and on the rare occasions when they didn’t, they got high-level individual performances to carry the team to victories, such as Darcy Kuemper in San Jose or Kevin Fiala in Pittsburgh.

All in all, the Kings have just gotten the job done on the road this season and it’s been that road performance that has carried the team out of a slow start to the season.

Big Guns Have Been The Big Guns
At the quarter-season mark, forwards Adrian Kempe, Kevin Fiala and Quinton Byfield ranked first, second and third in points and first, second and third in time on ice among forwards.

They’ve only played the two games together as a line, coming over the last 48 hours, but this is based on what they've done apart, more so than together. Those are the players the Kings need to rely on to put the puck in the back of the net and create offensive opportunities. While there have been some issues elsewhere in that department, the Kings have generally speaking gotten what they’ve needed from that trio.

Kempe sits just shy of a point-per-game pace in the early stages of the season. He’s been the team’s top offensive player and if you look at his seven goals, they’ve included some really, really important ones. Kempe has three-game winning goals, tied for fourth in the league on the season, with two of those coming in overtime. He also scored goals inside the final minute against Minnesota and San Jose, goals that tied the game late to force overtime. Between the two overtime goals and the two tying goals, that's four of his seven that have directly turned zero points into one or one point into two. That’s immensely valuable.

Fiala leads the Kings with nine goals this season and he’s right around pace to match last season’s total of 35, which was a career high. Fiala has scored seven of his nine goals at even strength, also the most on the Kings and tied for 11th in the league when you look specifically at 5-on-5 offensive production, entering the weekend. What’s been interesting with Fiala is that he’s been the team’s best goalscorer at even strength and the team’s best playmaker on the power play with five assists. All in all, for a player who has often started seasons slowly, Fiala has been pretty impactful, among the better players in the early goings.

For Byfield, his 13 assists are tied with Kempe for the most on the team and with 17 points in total from 21 games, he’s tracking to exceed his previous career high in points handily, pacing over 50 assists and 65 goals over 82 games. Byfield had a really slow offensive start last season before he came on over the last three months. Last season, he collected point number 17 on December 28, in Game 35. This season, it came on November 15, Game 19. Much better start for number 55.

“Around The Margins”
Lots of talk about how the forward signings this summer were designed to improve the team around the margins, adding depth to a group that found itself playing three lines too often in the postseason loss to the Oilers.

Insert Corey Perry and Joel Armia, who have both exceeded expectations in the early goings.

How about Perry, man. And honestly, where might the Kings be without his early-season production? Perry scored seven goals in his first 10 games played this season, coming off an injury that kept him out of action for the first six games. Perry has played a bit more than expected but that’s come due to production, not necessity. He scored some pivotal goals, almost exclusively from the front of the net, and he’s been a very reliable option moving up and down the lineup and on the power play. Yeah, he's cooled off a bit since, but if we wrote this through 15 games, I think he'd maybe have been the team's MVP.

Terrific start overall for Perry in Los Angeles. You really couldn’t have asked for any more than he’s given through this point in the season.

Want to mention Joel Armia as well, because while Perry was the splashier name, Armia has been very effective as well. Signed to a two-year contract on July 1, Armia has been one of the NHL’s best penalty killers again this season. He’s scored three times while shorthanded, the most in the NHL, and he’s yet to be on the ice for a power-play goal against. He’s also delivered more at 5-on-5 than I think was expected when he signed. He's pushing for Top-9 minutes at this stage. He’s another player who has moved up and down the lineup and he’s rarely looked out of place anywhere he’s been.

Two players who were brought in to help the team in April but it turns out the Kings needed them in October and November. They've helped the team collect points they've desperately needed. Both players have over delivered thus far in the season.

3 Down
Home Not So Cooking
Okay, so the inverse, right?

The Kings have 10 wins this season. Just one of those wins has come at home.

The Kings are 1-4-3 this season as Crypto.com Arena. They lead the league in road points yet rank 31st in the league in home points, with just five from eight games played, ahead of only the New York Rangers. For a team that led the NHL with 31 wins last season on home ice, the most in franchise history, the slow start here this season is not sustainable if the Kings want to make the playoffs.

Again, similar to the road success, the home struggles aren’t easily explainable. Maybe there’s some truth to the inverse of what Edmundson said, in that last season’s home dominance perhaps leads the team to try to do too much at times, feeling good at home. Not sure, but they can't be feeling very good right now. The Kings felt on their last four-game homestand, in which they went 1-2-1, that their performances were greater than the record showed. Fair enough, but now those performances should start to translate into wins if that’s the case.

They’re in a stretch with six of their next seven games at home, with the lone road contest a short trip to Anaheim to play the Ducks. For a group that feels like they are starting to figure it out, now’s the time to turn that home record around a bit and start to accumulate some points on home ice.

Power Play Struggles
I think the biggest area of concern offensively right now continues to be the power play. Not exactly a hot take, eh?

The Kings got good production early in the season, capitalizing on some rush opportunities, as well as some 5-on-3 and 4-on-3 chances. That bolstered the number early, but in terms of 5-on-4, in-zone production, the Kings have looked a lot more like the first 60 games last season than the final 20 + playoffs. The Kings sit at 14.3 percent, the third-lowest rate in the NHL.

I understand why the Kings persisted with a five-forward look. It was hands down the most effective iteration of the power play last season. But 22 games is enough of a sample size to start to get a sense of what things are. And the power play has not been good enough. Something has to change.

Ken Holland agreed and said this week that changes were being implemented on that unit. One was personnel driven, with Andrei Kuzmenko put back on that unit after three healthy scratches and he looked pretty dangerous with the puck. But the five forwards remained, so the rest of the changes were likely concept driven, as opposed to personnel driven. I thought it looked better in San Jose after those changes, but you don’t get points for looking better. Then it went 0-for-5 on Friday. The goals have to come and they have to start coming from the base alignment. That means in-zone setups, playing 5-on-4. Change is likely afoot.

Ultimately, I’m not sure what the answer is. The Kings could try Clarke there, who is probably the team’s best distributor at the center point, which could free up Kempe to have more dangerous shooting opportunities, either from closer to the net or via the one-timer in the right-hand circle. However, Clarke doesn’t carry the same shot threat from the top and teams last season were cheating to deny Kempe one-timer looks, which really stifled the production. Remember it was equally ineffective with that configuration last season. That also leaves PP2, with Drew Doughty injured, without a defenseman with real power-play experience. Something has to improve, though, to get the Kings to where they need to be offensively. I'd like to see Clarke on PP1 to start, with Kempe, Kuzmenko and Fiala around him, and go from there.

Middle-Six Men
There are a couple ways to have gone here, but I think the more relevant one to discuss is the scoring between the players listed in the top section, zoning in on the middle six.

The top end has been productive, as noted, and Anze Kopitar has started to get hot as well, with four goals in seven games after a slower start. Alex Laferriere has done the same after missing a little bit of time. But the Kings are a team that is built to get offense throughout the lineup to be successful. Three good lines over one or two great ones, is the approach. But we just haven’t gotten that yet.

There are players who have produced at certain levels in their careers who just haven’t had the same production thus far. Phillip Danault has yet to find the back of the net in 22 games. He’s averaged 18 goals per season since signing with the Kings but none thus far this season. That has to change for the Kings fifth-leading player in time on ice. Danault’s primary line from this season features the players who led the Kings in even-strength goals in the 2021-22, 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons, with Warren Foegele and Trevor Moore. This season, they’ve only combined for six total goals, four at 5-on-5. When you add Kuzmenko in there, that’s five total goals 5-on-5 and nine in total. Part of what made last season’s team tick was a group of nine forwards that could all threaten on any given night. That’s what’s been missing thus far. It's not just on those guys. But the Kings have to get offensive production throughout the lineup to keep pace. They have not gotten it thus far .

The optimism should come from the fact that each of these players have historical production to their names. These are players who have historical production on their respective CV's. They’ve done it before and they’re unlikely to not see their numbers rise. But the numbers are the numbers right now. So that’s where we’re at.

That's the 20(ish) game overview. Day-to-day coverage to return tomorrow, as the Kings get back at it for practice. As noted above, expecting that comes with some changes, so we'll cover those in the AM. More to follow, Insiders!