EL SEGUNDO — The 60th year of Kings hockey will get underway Wednesday when the team travels to Denver, seeking to avenge a first-round sweep by the Colorado Avalanche.
Though they’ve had to get up from the poker table early in each of the past five postseasons, the Kings continued pushing more chips into the pot as they signed aging veteran after aging veteran in an attempt to right a ship that went off course after a disastrous 2023 offseason from which they have yet to recover.
The biggest shift for the Kings was behind the bench, with an overhauled coaching staff seeking to shake the doldrums of a stretch where they changed coaches roughly as often as they changed underwear.
In a Western Conference and Pacific Division that are still relatively thin, the Kings will again seek to move forward in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2014. Only the Detroit Red Wings, who last won a series in 2013, are experiencing a longer wait to advance.
New captain, new coach, new weapons
While the Kings neither blew up their roster nor went for broke to add to it this offseason, they hired their first name-brand coach, Peter Laviolette, since Todd McLellan arrived. Then they added winger Mats Zuccarello on a savvy deal whose balance can largely roll into next season’s cap considerations before naming defenseman Drew Doughty as the team captain.
Laviolette not only has one of the highest pedigrees among NHL coaches with the seventh-most victories in league history, but a reputation for making a swift impact. He’ll be reunited with flanker Artemi Panarin, whom the Kings added in February and previously thrived under Laviolette as a New York Ranger. He’ll also guide another offensive savant, Zuccarello, who had 54 points in 59 games for the Minnesota Wild last season.
Doughty, who joined the organization in 2008 and has long been an alternate captain, received the “C” from Anže Kopitar. Kopitar was more of a leader by example that brought the group back to the center from its highs and lows, while Doughty has long been the more fiery and bombastic voice in the room.
“He’s so emotional, he’s so vocal, he wants to win and he’s so open and honest. He doesn’t think he’s the smartest guy in the room; he wants everyone to be involved,” said blue-liner Brian Dumoulin, who played under Kopitar as well as Sidney Crosby in Pittsburgh. “When you talk about those other leaders that I’ve had, he fits right into that group.”
Special teams: nowhere to go but up
The Kings sank like a stone in the league standings – they went from sixth to 20th among 32 teams – and on the penalty kill, dropping from eighth to 30th year-over-year. The loss of top defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov on the heels of Matt Roy’s departure may have played a role, but it will soon be known if those declines were aberrations or new norms.
The power play was even more concerning, however, motivating general manager Ken Holland to work the phones in February and again in June. They had ranked 30th in the NHL before the 2025 trade deadline and only improved on that rating marginally last season, when they finished 28th.
Enter Panarin, a beacon of sentience in a formerly somnambulist man-advantage group that dragged his comrades into the fight. He’ll be joined this year by Zuccarello, 39, who shares Panarin’s prescience with the extra man as well as his ability to make deft cross-ice passes. The two will start the year on the top power-play unit, one that looked promising in the preseason.
“He’s great. He’s so smart. He’s a smaller guy and not the fastest guy, but he can still be ahead of the game,” winger Adrian Kempe said of Zuccarello. “He thinks the game so well, and that’s why he’s still producing at this level at the age he is.”
Escaping Round 1
Although making the playoffs was hardly a given after the San Jose Sharks and St. Louis Blues were among the teams that improved over the summer, the Kings could find themselves in the postseason for a sixth consecutive spring.
That will mean trying to avoid a sixth consecutive first-round knockout, with 2022’s seven-game dogfight against the Edmonton Oilers descending into the past two seasons, which have resulted in a reverse-sweep and a plain old sweep, respectively.
While the reacquisition of winger Corey Perry, adding veteran utility forward Erik Haula, a full year of deadline-snag center Scott Laughton, the eventual return of flanker Kevin Fiala from a broken leg, Kempe’s hefty new contract and Zuccarello’s arrival might offer cause for optimism, Panarin still figures to be the biggest needle-mover. Laviolette wasn’t trying to put a saddle on his Russian mustang, who had his most productive season under Laviolette in 2023-24.
“With his creativity, I don’t think you can try to harness that, I think you have to let that go,” Laviolette said. “I’ve coached him before, he’s a competitor, he’s highly skilled and he’s an elite player that can make a difference in a game, and I don’t want to do anything that constrains him from reaching that level.”