Are the Kings good enough to make the 2024-25 Stanley Cup Playoffs?
The Los Angeles Kings had a tough preseason, losing defenseman Drew Doughty to a significant lower-body injury. The star blueliner is expected to be out for several months, meanwhile the Kings kick off their new campaign on Thursday, when they visit the Buffalo Sabres.
The Kings will be trying to claw their way back up the standings in the Western Conference, and have an uphill climb out of the gate, starting the new season with seven straight road games. The Kings don’t play their home opener until Oct. 24, when they host the San Jose Sharks.
As the new NHL season is upon us, so too is our Daily Faceoff Live show with Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli. They discussed the Kings and their season expectations on today’s episode, and had this to say about what to expect in Los Angeles.
Yaremchuk: One fan base that may be wincing a little bit is that of the LA Kings. I think Kings’ fans are going – ‘can Darcy Kuemper get back to his old self?’. Can this blueline survive without Drew Doughty, who is going to be missing the next couple of months, with that injury he sustained in the preseason. Can Warren Foegele bring what Viktor Arvidsson did? There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ with this Kings team, and your bold prediction, you didn’t have them in the playoffs.
Seravalli: Yeah, I don’t. I think they’re not far off, I think they could certainly be in that mix, somewhere between seven and 11. They are a team that I think, has some flaws. I’m not so much down on Kuemper, so much so, because he’s has spent time in LA before and there’s a familiarity factor. I think that it’s totally not a new environment.
I do think Brandt Clarke can pick up a lot of the slack for Drew Doughty on the back end. Particularly on the power play for the first couple months of the year. That’s going to be his coming out party. But, I think where I struggle with the Kings, maybe so much isn’t necessarily in the short term, of this season and making the playoffs this year, because again, it’s certainly within the realm of possibilities that they’re in the playoffs. It’s more so looking at the long term view of this team and saying ‘hey this is one that came off a pretty significant rebuild’.
They’ve gotten to the playoffs three years in a row, lost in the first round each time to the Oilers. And, while there may be a certain part of ‘hey there’s a team that’s a road block in our division ahead of us’, the other part is outside of Quinton Byfield, there’s only one other player on their playoff roster last year that was homegrown talent under the age of 23, and that was Alex Laferriere.
For more on the Kings’ outlook, some bold predictions for the new season and a preview of tonight’s triple-header, watch the full episode here: