- Kings defenseman Drew Doughty missed most of last season after undergoing ankle surgery but returned in late January and was a regular from there. However, Zach Dooley of LA Kings Insider notes that the veteran underwent a second surgery on the ankle after the playoffs, one that kept him sidelined for eight weeks. Doughty feels the second procedure will allow him to feel more like he did a couple of years ago and given how much Los Angeles relies on him, a healthier version of himself would give their back end a nice boost to start the season.
Kings Rumors
Kings’ Angus Booth, Corey Perry To Miss Several Months With Injury
The Los Angeles Kings will be faced with a pair of long-term injuries out of the gates this season. Depth defenseman Angus Booth is expected to miss “several months” with a lower-body injury per John Hoven and Mayors Manor. Hoven specified that Booth’s timeline will be similar to winger Corey Perry, who underwent knee surgery earlier in the month to address an injury sustained in a late-summer practice.
Perry’s injury will have the most direct effect on the Kings’ lineup. The 40-year-old, soon-to-be Hall-Of-Fame hopeful signed a one-year, $2MM contract with the Kings this summer. He seemed well set to fill an important veteran role in the team’s middle-six, after posting a productive 19 goals and 30 points in 81 games with the Edmonton Oilers last season. Perry also scored 14 points while playing in all 22 games of Edmonton’s run to a Stanley Cup Finals loss. Now, it seems his durability has run slim. It will be a long while before Perry breaks into the Kings’ lineup. When he does, there’s no telling how the aged winger will adjust after another significant lower-body injury.
Booth won’t leave an NHL role in his absence, though his injury will dampen his chances to jump into Los Angeles’ seventh-defender role. He played through his first pro season last year, netting 13 points and 38 penalty minutes in 50 games with the AHL’s Ontario Reign. It was a stout year where Booth’s defense-first style seemed to shine. He was a long-shot to break camp with the Kings this season, but could have rivaled players like Samuel Bolduc and Jacob Moverare for a depth role. Instead, he’ll have to wait until closer to the end of the calendar year to earn his chance. Booth should be expected to return to Ontario’s rotation when he’s back to full health.
Anze Kopitar Announces Retirement Following 2025-26 Season
Kings franchise center Anze Kopitar will retire following the 2025-26 campaign, he said in a press conference Thursday. He confirms what he alluded to last month as he enters the final season of the two-year, $14MM extension he signed in 2023.
It’s a trying day for L.A. sports fans, who also saw MLB’s Dodgers announce future Hall of Fame pitcher Clayton Kershaw will retire at the end of the 2025 campaign. “This will be my last year in the NHL,” Kopitar said. “[My family has] been by my side for 20 years. They now deserve a husband and a dad. I want to get this announcement out of the way now, so it’s not a distraction. I don’t want the attention on me. The moves we made made us better. I can’t wait to start.”
Like his baseball counterpart, Kopitar was a first-round pick by his club and spent his entire career in Los Angeles. The 11th overall pick of the 2005 draft from Sweden’s Södertälje SK wasn’t only the first player from Slovenia to be drafted in the first round, he was the first to even make his NHL debut when he arrived in North America one year later. He hit the ground running in 2006-07, breaking camp with the Kings and immediately stepping in as their top-line center with 61 points in 72 games while seeing north of 20 minutes per game as a rookie. That wasn’t enough to make him a Calder Trophy nominee in a stacked class that included Evgeni Malkin, Paul Stastny, and Jordan Staal, though.
That marked the beginning of what will be a 20-year career, one of the most consistent of its kind. Kopitar continued to flirt with the point per game mark in his second year, making the All-Star Game after tallying 77 points in 82 appearances. He spent a few years struggling to carry the burden of a Kings club that was exiting a rebuild, but after he made the playoffs for the first time in 2010, he finished top 15 in Selke Trophy voting for eight consecutive seasons, cementing himself alongside Patrice Bergeron as the best two-way forward of the 2010s.
While the Kings have had some star power in their lengthy franchise history, Wayne Gretzky notwithstanding, it was Kopitar who first managed to bring the Stanley Cup to Hollywood. The Kings advanced to three straight Western Conference Finals from 2012-14 and ended up converting those into championships on the first and last occasion. During that three-year run, Kopitar’s 188 points in 211 regular-season games ranked 12th in the league, and his +60 rating ranked ninth. No one had more playoff points than Kopitar’s 55 in 64 games during that span.
L.A. had rewarded Kopitar nicely coming off his entry-level deal, giving him a seven-year, $47.6MM commitment following his sophomore season. Before that deal was due to expire in the summer of 2016, the Kings extended him on his big payday – an eight-year, $80MM contract that coincided with him assuming the captaincy from Dustin Brown. While the Kings’ team success dipped in the latter half of the 2010s, that contract saw Kopitar have his career year in 2017-18. He posted a 35-57–92 scoring line in 82 games, remarkably his only time over the point-per-game threshold, with a +21 rating to take home his second Selke Trophy and finishing third in MVP voting, his highest-ever finish for the Hart.
Even as Kopitar enters his age-38 season, he remains an effective top-six center. The slow signs of decline are there, though. His 21 goals and 67 points in 81 games last season tied for his lowest output since 2019, and his usage has ’dwindled’ to a few ticks under 19 minutes per game. He’s still one of the league’s best faceoff men, winning 57.2% of his draws last year, and has continued to rattle off four consecutive top-10 Selke finishes. One noticeable dropoff is his willingness to deliver and take contact. While never an overtly physical center, he recorded a career-low 31 hits in 2024-25. The tradeoff is durability – he’s only missed four games in the last eight seasons.
Those hoping for Kopitar to be a part of the Kings’ bench or front office next year will be disappointed. He’s planning on moving his family back to Slovenia after the season ends and isn’t leaving the door open to change his mind on retirement, he told Dennis Bernstein of The Fourth Period. Nonetheless, he’ll retire sitting right alongside Gretzky, Marcel Dionne, and Luc Robitaille as the most impactful players in franchise history, and he’s the only one to spend his entire career in California. His 1,278 career points rank second in franchise history behind Dionne’s 1,307, so he’ll end up as the franchise’s all-time leading scorer barring a highly disappointing sendoff campaign. With two Cups, two Selkes, and likely over 1,300 career points when all is said and done, he’s a virtual lock to be inducted into the Hall of Fame when he’s eligible in the class of 2029.
Kopitar now looks to deliver at least a playoff series win in his final season, something the Kings haven’t accomplished since winning the Cup 11 years ago. He’ll do so as his successor as the club’s leading offensive producer, winger Adrian Kempe, is also a pending unrestricted free agent.
All of us at PHR congratulate Kopitar on a spectacular career.
Image courtesy of Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images.
Kings’ Corey Perry Undergoes Knee Surgery
Saturday: The Kings announced that Perry has undergone successful knee surgery and will be out for six to eight weeks. That means that he will not be available to start the upcoming season and could ultimately miss more than a month if he winds up missing the longer end of that timeline.
Perry has $1.5MM in performance bonuses in his contract that are tied to games played. However, he only needs to get 50 regular season games played to max out on those so this injury alone shouldn’t stop him from having a chance at earning the full amount of those bonuses.
Friday: According to the staff at Mayor’s Manor, new forward for the Los Angeles Kings, Corey Perry, was reportedly injured in an on-ice incident today at the Toyota Sports Performance Center in El Segundo. The outlet suggests that Perry was taken off the ice in a wheelchair for further medical evaluation.
There’s little information regarding the injury, and it’s unknown at this point if Perry suffered the injury as a result of contact or not. The only information that Mayor’s Manor could provide was that the injury happened along the boards, not on open ice.
It would obviously be a significant blow to Perry and the Kings after the 41-year-old veteran signed a one-year, $2MM contract with Los Angeles at the beginning of the offseason, if he misses significant time due to the injury. Perry was expected to contribute in a bottom-six role, both for his offensive and leadership abilities.
Outside of his 14-year career with the Anaheim Ducks, which included a Stanley Cup ring in 2007 and a Hart Memorial and Maurice Richard Trophy in 2011, Perry’s career has become a point of fascination over the last few seasons. Perry has reached the Stanley Cup Finals five out of six times since signing with the Dallas Stars before the 2019-20 season, after being bought out by the Ducks, but lost each time.
Still, he’s been able to stay relevant and productive in the twilight years of his career. Split between the Stars, Montreal Canadiens, Tampa Bay Lightning, Chicago Blackhawks, and Edmonton Oilers, Perry has scored 76 goals and 159 points in 404 games while averaging 12:51 of ice time per game. Throughout his past six playoff runs, the veteran winger has recorded 28 goals and 52 points in 119 games, averaging 13:17 per game.
Fortunately, the Kings have compiled enough depth, especially on the wing, to sustain such an injury. While Perry’s potential replacement may not have the same value, players like Akil Thomas, Andre Lee, Jeff Malott, or Taylor Ward could temporarily fulfill the role.
Adrian Kempe Discusses Contract Talks
Kings forward Adrian Kempe is currently slated to be one of the top unrestricted free agents next summer if the two sides can’t reach a deal on an extension before then. Speaking in a recent interview with Sirius XM (transcribed by Mayor’s Manor), the 28-year-old made it clear that he’d like to get something done sooner rather than later:
I would like to get it done as soon as possible, but I’m still not in a rush. I don’t want to rush anything. But I also don’t want to come around after Christmas, with the trade deadline starting to come up, and then I’m sitting there not knowing where we’re at or we’re not [close] on the terms of a contract. That, I wouldn’t be looking forward to. So, before Christmas would be great. Before camp would be great.
Kempe is coming off his second straight season of amassing at least 70 points, picking up 35 goals and 38 assists in 81 games. After being more of a checker in the first few years of his career, he has become one of the more consistent scoring threats in the NHL, averaging 35 goals over the last four seasons.
That has him well-positioned to land a significant raise from the $5.5MM he will make in the final year of his deal, one that started back in 2022-23 and has become one of the better team-friendly contracts around the NHL. David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period was the latest to suggest that Kempe’s camp was seeking a max-term eight-year extension worth $10MM per season with Los Angeles coming in at $9MM per year. Meanwhile, AFP Analytics projected a seven-year, $64.225MM deal for Kempe earlier in the offseason, one that would carry an AAV of $9.175MM.
If that gap can’t be bridged within the first few months of the season, Kempe acknowledged that he wouldn’t exactly be comfortable heading into the trade deadline unsigned:
For me and the team, I don’t think it would be a good thing to do that. For me, I feel like, if I haven’t signed before the deadline, then you don’t know what’s going to happen.
Considering both Kempe and the Kings under new GM Ken Holland have publicly stated a willingness to get something done and Kempe’s discomfort with pushing talks deep into the season, this is a situation that should get resolved well before he gets close to testing the market. And if he does somehow reach free agency, Kempe could very well wind up with a higher price tag than he’s asking for now, especially if few top names actually get there as is typically the case.
Kings' Angus Booth Looking To Avoid Sophomore Slump
- One defensive prospect for the Los Angeles Kings is looking to avoid the dreaded “sophomore slump” this season. In an interview with Anthony Collazo of The Mayor’s Manor, prospect Angus Booth spoke about his mission to avoid the slump, saying, “I think you just don’t want to think about. The more you think about it, the more it could happen. So, I think you just focus on the moment. You practice, you play hard, you do what you’re going to do usually, and it should… it should be avoided.” The former fourth-round pick spent last season with the AHL’s Ontario Reign, scoring two goals and 13 points in 50 games with a +6 rating.
[SOURCE LINK]
Kings In No Rush To Shop Brandt Clarke
A front-office change in Los Angeles brought sweeping change to the Kings’ blue line this summer. With Hall-of-Fame executive Ken Holland at the helm, the club lost their top left-shot defender in Vladislav Gavrikov to the Rangers in free agency and also traded promising puck-moving righty Jordan Spence to the Senators for futures. Their replacements were a pair of declining but hardened top-four fixtures, Cody Ceci and Brian Dumoulin, on the open market.
But Brandt Clarke, the club’s eighth overall pick in 2021, remains with L.A. as he enters the final season of his entry-level contract. That’s despite reporting that the Kings were open to moving him at last season’s trade deadline in their pursuit of a forward upgrade. They ended up not making a move large enough to require parting ways with him, and of course, those ideations of a trade were under a previous regime.
The 22-year-old’s development has been handled in somewhat of a puzzling manner. The 6’2″ righty always faced a bit of an uphill battle as an OHLer who had his draft year completely upended due to COVID. While most of his peers ended up sitting on the sidelines for the entire season, he was high-end enough of a prospect to play pro hockey overseas. He was thus loaned to HC Nove Zamky of the Slovak Extraliga, where he logged 15 points in 26 games en route to becoming a top-10 selection by the Kings.
Clarke returned stateside and didn’t miss a beat, exploding offensively. He was arguably the best player in major junior hockey in 2022-23 aside from the draft-year phenom Connor Bedard, posting 61 points in just 31 games from the blue line for the Barrie Colts.
He also made his NHL debut that season, posting two assists in a nine-game trial. But as he made the jump to pro hockey full-time in 2023-24, that offensive outburst the prior season wasn’t enough to get him an extended runway in the NHL. He made 16 appearances for the Kings but ended up playing most of the campaign for AHL Ontario, where he clicked at nearly a point per game in his first real taste of high-level hockey and led the league in rookie assists.
That made Clarke essentially an undeniable piece for the Kings’ main roster. While he made the team out of camp and never looked back, he was still used rather sparingly, despite top righty Drew Doughty missing a good portion of the season due to an ankle injury.
Concerns about his individual defensive acumen limited his playing time to just 16:17 per game, although he was still relatively involved physically with 121 blocks. He churned out five goals and 33 points in 78 games – fine production for that limited usage – and posted good possession numbers in sheltered minutes with a +13 rating and 54.0 CF% and 54.2 xGF% at even strength.
As he enters a contract year, there should be more opportunities for him. Even if he doesn’t necessarily slot in above Ceci on the team’s depth chart, he should get the additional power-play minutes that Spence is vacating and, realistically, his general mobility should make him a candidate to leapfrog the newcomer and begin the season as L.A.’s No. 2 option on the right side behind Doughty.
That roster math, plus a new braintrust in place, has likely bought him some time to make a lasting impression on the Kings’ brass. While general manager Ken Holland told RG’s James Murphy that Clarke is “a really talented guy with a bright future,” he neither committed to a change of scenery nor long-term belief. “Now we’ve got to figure out where it’s going. I think the best way is to…I mean, I know him, but I don’t know him. Do you know what I mean?” Holland said.
Kings’ Liam Greentree Fully Recovered From Wrist Surgery
Although he’s not expected to crack the Los Angeles Kings’ roster out of training camp, prospect Liam Greentree has reportedly fully recovered from his offseason wrist surgery. In an update from David Hofreiter of the Mayor’s Manor, Greentree will participate in the Kings’ upcoming rookie camp.
After recording 36 goals and 90 points in 64 games for the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires during the 2023-24 season, the Kings selected Greentree with the 26th overall pick of the 2024 NHL Draft. Suiting up for the Spitfires again last year, Greentree set new career-highs with 49 goals and 119 points in 64 games with an impressive +55 rating.
He added on to his exceptional 2024-25 performance with a solid postseason run, scoring 14 goals and 24 points in 11 games. Unfortunately, the Spitfires were eliminated in the second round of the OHL playoffs.
Regardless of the solid campaign, it’s been several months since Greentree has played at full speed, considering he missed the Kings’ development camp earlier in the summer. Meanwhile, he was held out of the Spitfires’ first preseason contest last night, although he’s expected to feature in at least one exhibition before heading to Los Angeles for rookie camp.
He’ll be an interesting player to watch in the upcoming season. He has very little left to prove in the OHL, but isn’t old enough to play for the Kings’ AHL affiliate, the Ontario Reign (unless the current rules are unexpectedly amended before the start of the season). Instead of getting a nine-game tryout with the Kings to start the season, it may be best to wait toward the back of the season to get Greentree into Los Angeles’ nine remaining games before participating in the playoffs, if they qualify.
Kings, Adrian Kempe Seemingly Not Far Apart On Extension Negotiations
- Playing out the final year of one of the team-friendliest contracts in the league, Adrian Kempe of the Los Angeles Kings is eligible for an extension. Given that the Kings could be in the final year with franchise legend Anže Kopitar, Los Angeles should be prioritizing Kempe’s extension. In a minor update on the negotiations, Pagnotta notes that Kempe is seeking an eight-year, $80MM extension, while the Kings have countered with an eight-year, $72MM offer. Given that the two sides are only $1MM apart on AAV, it should be a bridgeable gap, meaning an agreement shouldn’t be too far away.
[SOURCE LINK]
Could Armia Be The Best Value Signing For The Kings?
- As part of their July 1st spending spree, the Kings added winger Joel Armia on a two-year, $5MM contract. Zach Dooley of LA Kings Insider wonders if the 32-year-old might wind up as their best value signing. It’s expected that he’ll line up on the fourth line at even strength which means his playing time and production might drop from a year ago (14:18 and 29 points) but his ability to kill penalties should take some of the pressure off their top-line penalty killers from a year ago, freeing them up to focus a bit more on their offense.