Pierre Engvall Suspended One Game
5:50 PM: The NHL Department of Player Safety has announced that Engvall will serve a one-game suspension for his high stick on Durzi.
10:13 AM: Match penalties given for intent to injure come with an automatic review from the league, meaning the NHL has some work to do following the Toronto Maple Leafs-Los Angeles Kings game last night. Pierre Engvall will have a hearing with the Department of Player Safety for his high stick on Sean Durzi, which earned him a five-minute major and an early trip to the showers.
The two players were engaged all over the rink, before meeting again at center ice. After they both raised their sticks to battle, Engvall ended up swinging his down and hitting Durzi in the back of the head and neck. The Kings defenseman did not suffer a major injury, but Engvall may end up missing more than just the remainder of that game.
Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe afterward said that he didn’t think Engvall meant to make such heavy contact, explaining that “you’ve all watched Pierre play for long enough to know he doesn’t play with an intent to injure.” The 6’5″ forward had just six penalty minutes in 27 games before last night, four of which came against the Dallas Stars earlier this week for another high stick, this time on Jason Robertson.
Given the lack of injury and clean record of the 26-year-old, it seems unlikely for him to get a lengthy suspension. But the Maple Leafs should prepare for life without him for tomorrow’s game against the Calgary Flames. With Nick Robertson suffering a shoulder injury, the Maple Leafs could be down two players from last night’s lineup.
Los Angeles Kings Working On Trevor Moore Extension
The Los Angeles Kings haven’t had exactly the season they hoped for after last year’s playoff performance, but one continued bright spot has been the play of Trevor Moore. In his latest 32 Thoughts column for Sportsnet, Elliotte Friedman writes that he thinks an extension is “getting closer” for the pending free agent.
Moore, 27, has always been one of the hardest-working players on the ice, using his speed to chase down and steal pucks from opponents or be first in on the forecheck. In a breakout season last year, he scored 17 goals and 48 points during the regular season and then was a real difference-maker in the playoffs, scoring five points in seven games to push Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers to the brink.
This year, he’s been scoring at an even better clip and is on pace to hit the 20-goal mark for the first time. The Kings’ coaching staff obviously trusts him, as Moore is averaging nearly 18 minutes a night, including time on both the powerplay and penalty kill.
In September, Eric Stephens of The Athletic suggested that a multi-year deal of around $3MM per season might be in order, but after another good start, it could climb even higher than that. Complementary, two-way wingers are somewhat unique in that their compensation can vary wildly in free agency.
Blake Coleman turned two outstanding playoff performances into a six-year, $29.4MM contract, for instance, despite never coming close to Moore’s 48-point mark. Ilya Mikheyev landed a four-year, $19MM deal after setting a career-high with 32 points in 53 games. Evan Rodrigues, though, settled for a one-year, $2MM deal after his 43-point breakout last year that was considered by some as a product of playing with Sidney Crosby.
What Moore could get on the open market is a mystery, but if Friedman is right, it may not matter. The Kings have plenty of time to reach an agreement with him that will keep him away from other teams.
Los Angeles Kings Loan Brandt Clarke To Team Canada
Finally, Brandt Clarke is getting his chance to play for Team Canada at the World Juniors. After not being named to the roster for the 2022 World Juniors, the Los Angeles Kings have now loaned the 19-year-old to Canada for 2023.
Clarke has not played for the Kings in over a month and was recently recalled from an AHL conditioning stint that allowed him five games in the minors. He’s been a healthy scratch since.
Those scratches haven’t necessarily been because of his play. Clarke is sitting at NHL games on the season – one more would cause his entry-level contract to go into effect. If he doesn’t play another game for LA, his contract will slide to next season.
Head coach Todd McLellan spoke on the team’s decision-making progress with where to assign Clarke moving forward:
Sometimes players get rushed and we don’t want to do that with Clarkie. There’s the hockey part, and then there’s all of the strength and professional habits, practice habits, travel habits and teammate habits that are really important and you don’t always get that at the junior level when you play 38 minutes a night and you stay on the power play for two straight minutes. I’m not saying that’s happening with Clarkie, they’re a very well-run team [in Barrie], but that can happen in certain situations. Right now, we think that this is a real good spot for him and we’ll see where it goes.
The eighth overall pick in 2021, Clarke has a goal and three assists in 14 games split between NHL Los Angeles and AHL Ontario this season. Despite notching over a point-per-game on a subpar Barrie Colts team in the OHL last season, Canada did not name him to their 2022 World Juniors roster.
It didn’t harm them – they won gold anyways. But with several players aging out of the tournament, Canada’s defense seemed weaker than last year’s when their selection camp roster was announced Monday. Clarke’s addition undoubtedly brings this team to an entirely different level and solidifies their status as favorites to win back-to-back gold medals for the first time since they won five straight from 2005 to 2009.
Los Angeles Kings Activate Alex Iafallo
The Los Angeles Kings will have some added scoring punch in the lineup when they take on the Ottawa Senators tonight, after activating Alex Iafallo from injured reserve.
It’s been nearly two months since we last saw Iafallo in a game for the Kings, and he was red hot when he did go down to a lower-body injury. The 28-year-old had five points in the first four games of the year and looked like he might be on his way to setting career-high scoring totals.
Now, after missing 23 games, he’ll slide back into a Kings’ lineup that has somehow managed to stay in a playoff position despite going 13-10-4 on the year. Los Angeles has posted a 3-4-3 record in their last ten but remain in third place in the Pacific for the time being.
Getting Iafallo back won’t fix all of the things that have ailed the club this year, but his speed should give them a different look against the Senators tonight. The first of a six-game road trip, it’s perfect timing for the Kings, who will travel to Toronto, Montreal, Columbus, Buffalo, and Boston before finally returning home for a game on the 17th.
Alex Iafallo To Return During The Upcoming Road Trip
The Kings are expected to welcome back winger Alex Iafallo to the lineup on their upcoming road trip, reports Zach Dooley of LA Kings Insider. The 28-year-old suffered a lower-body injury back in mid-October after a strong start that saw him pick up at least a point per game in each of his first four contests and has been out since then. Last season, Iafallo was tied for fifth on the team in goals (17) while finishing sixth in points with 37 and his return will give Los Angeles another proven forward in the middle six to bolster what has already been a strong offense this season with the team averaging just over 3.4 goals per game so far. He skated on the third line in practice today and could be available as soon as Tuesday’s contest against Ottawa.
Decision Time Is Coming For Kings And Brandt Clarke
One of the underlying themes for junior-aged players in the NHL is noting when they officially burn the first year of their entry-level contract once they play in their tenth game of the season. Some teams are comfortable going past that point and are more concerned with the second threshold of 40 games on the active roster when a player accrues a year of service time towards UFA eligibility. Others try to drag out the decision as long as they can to allow for extra evaluation time.
The Kings are clearly in the latter category when it comes to defenseman Brandt Clarke. Los Angeles selected the 19-year-old eighth overall in 2021 following a strong season with Barrie of the OHL. He returned to the Colts last season and simply dominated, notching 59 points in 55 games and did well enough in six preseason games to earn a spot on the opening roster.
Before going any further, it’s worth noting that the agreement between the NHL and CHL prohibits junior-aged players from playing in the minors until their age-20 year (with the exception being if they’ve already played four seasons of major junior). With Clarke not in his age-20 year, his playing options this season are the NHL and the OHL only.
Los Angeles quickly burned through Clarke’s nine games, the last of which came on November 1st. At that time, they opted to hold him out of the lineup long enough to satisfy the conditions needed to make him eligible for a two-week conditioning stint with AHL Ontario which supersedes the NHL/CHL agreement in that one scenario and it’s not one that can be used repeatedly. Clarke went down, played in five games with the Reign, and was recalled on Sunday where he has been scratched ever since.
It’s certainly understandable that the Kings might not want to return him to junior, a league that Clarke has proven all that he really needs to prove. In that sense, dropping down to a lower level might be perceived as stagnating his development. However, simply not playing isn’t exactly helping his development either. There’s something to be gained from practicing with the big club, but that’s only for a certain amount of time before not suiting up becomes problematic. Plus, keeping a player up with no intention of playing him isn’t the most efficient use of cap space as the Kings could stand to benefit from banking some extra room to use closer to the trade deadline this season.
There’s one way that the Kings could kick this decision a little further down the road. If Clarke is invited to participate at Team Canada’s training camp for the upcoming World Juniors, Los Angeles could hold him on the roster for a few more days and then loan him to Canada’s squad. They would then reserve the ability to recall him at that time when they could evaluate him in a few more practices and then decide what to do. If they were to loan him to the OHL before Canada’s camp begins, they wouldn’t be able to recall Clarke back to Los Angeles.
That would then take them to the OHL trade deadline (January 10th) where they could see if he’s moved to a more favorable situation or if Barrie, who could add top draft prospect Eduard Sale after the World Juniors, loads up, creating a better opportunity for him to return to. At this point, it appears that this is the route that they’re likely to take.
In the meantime, barring a change of heart that puts him in the lineup in the coming days (they next play Tuesday against Ottawa), it appears the waiting game for Clarke will continue for at least a few more days but with Canada’s camp starting soon, they’ll have a decision to make in the near future.
Kings Loan Aidan Dudas To AHL
12/4/22: Per a team announcement, Dudas has been loaned back to AHL Ontario.
12/3/22: The roster shuffling in Los Angeles has been rather frequent in recent weeks although it has often involved the same few players. That isn’t the case this time around as the team announced that they’ve recalled center Aidan Dudas from Ontario of the AHL.
This will be the 22-year-old’s first promotion to the full NHL roster after only previously having a pair of one-day taxi squad stints in the 2020-21 campaign. Dudas, a fourth-round pick of the Kings back in 2018 (113th overall), has played in 18 games with the Reign this season and is tied for the team lead in goals with six. He’s in the final year of his entry-level deal and will be a restricted free agent this summer so it appears they want to take at least a quick look to see how he is progressing.
Los Angeles was only carrying 22 players on their active roster following the re-assignment of Tyler Madden to Ontario on Friday. As a result, they didn’t need to make an additional move to open up a spot for Dudas to be recalled.
What Your Team Is Thankful For: Los Angeles Kings
With American Thanksgiving now behind us and the holiday season coming up, PHR is taking a look at what teams are thankful for in 2022-23. There also might be a few things your team would like down the road. We’ll examine what’s gone well in the early going and what could improve as the season rolls on for the Los Angeles Kings.
Who are the Kings thankful for?
The Los Angeles Kings’ offseason acquisition of Kevin Fiala from the Minnesota Wild, a deal that cost them a first-round pick and top prospect Brock Faber, was seen as a transaction carrying quite a bit of risk.
While Fiala had undoubtedly reached a new stratosphere of production in Minnesota (he scored at a 65-point pace in 2020-21 and scored 85 points in 2021-22) there were some who still believed that he was too inconsistent and his playoff production was too spotty to make acquiring Fiala a shrewd acquisition.
So far, Fiala has proved to be a strong investment for GM Rob Blake and the Kings. After a somewhat slow start, Fiala’s offensive production has really picked up, and he now leads the Kings with 28 points in 26 games, a total helped by a four-assist performance in a game against the division rival Seattle Kraken, a game that featured 17 total goals scored.
While finding the ideal fit for Fiala in the Kings’ lineup has been a bit of an adventure for head coach Todd McLellan, his current spot as the right winger next to Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe could be a smart long-term role.
Fiala is one of those rare wingers in the NHL who can reliably drive play, and as Kopitar, 35, begins to slow down the presence of Fiala should be able to keep the Kings’ offense chugging along.
While there are other players, such as Arthur Kaliyev or Gabriel Vilardi, whose strong performances are perhaps a bit more surprising, Fiala’s strong start to his Kings career is undoubtedly the most important development for the franchise as a whole.
If Fiala can continue to be a point-per-game, play-driving winger in Los Angeles, that seven-year, $7.875MM AAV extension could start to look like a bargain, which is definitely something for the Kings to be thankful for.
What are the Kings thankful for?
Their dynamic second line.
While Fiala and Vilardi have gotten more overall attention for their performances, the bedrock of this Kings’ team and their success so far this season has been their second line. Led by Phillip Danault, that line has been one of the league’s most well-rounded trios since they were first put together.
Danault, 29, arrived from the Montreal Canadiens with serious questions attached regarding his offensive game. Many wondered if the defense-first center would be able to muster enough of an offensive game to warrant his $5.5MM cap hit.
All Danault has done in Los Angeles is prove that he has a quality offensive dimension to his game, one that he hadn’t truly flashed in the NHL since the days when he was an up-and-coming player centering the Canadiens’ top line between Max Pacioretty and Alexander Radulov.
In 79 games last season Danault flew past his previous career high of 13 goals scored to pot 27. This year has been more of the same, as he has 18 points in 26 games. By pairing elite defensive play with the ability to mesh offensively with some quality linemates, Danault has quickly become a quality top-six center in Los Angeles.
But the Kings’ second line is more than just Danault. It also features Viktor Arvidsson, who ranks third on the Kings with 19 points in 24 games this year. Finishing the trio is Trevor Moore, a California native who had a breakout year in 2021-22 after he earned a role next to the two established NHLers. Moore scored 48 points in 81 games last year and has 17 points in 26 games this year.
The consistency and all-around quality of the Kings’ second line is something that sets them apart from many other NHL teams, which is undoubtedly something to be thankful for this holiday season.
What would the Kings be even more thankful for?
Improved play in the crease.
While the Kings are currently sitting in a playoff spot, the success they’ve found this season has come despite their goaltending, not because of it.
That point was made strikingly clear when the team placed Petersen on waivers this week, a transaction that came as a major setback for a player once seen as the Kings’ future at the position.
It’s not often that a team waives an in-his-prime player making $5MM or more, and yet the fact that Petersen found himself available to every other NHL club speaks to just how dire the Kings’ goaltending situation has been this year.
Jonathan Quick‘s reliance on his superb athleticism and unbelievable instincts earned him two Stanley Cup rings and two William M. Jennings trophies. But now a 36-year-old veteran, Quick’s athleticism has waned, and much of his effectiveness has gone with it.
Quick is no longer the elite goalie he once was, and while his .910 save percentage last year was certainly acceptable, his .889 so far this year is not.
Petersen has struggled this year to an even greater extent than Quick. As mentioned earlier, he hit waivers this week after posting a grisly .868 save percentage in 10 games.
The Kings are saddled with Petersen’s backloaded $5MM AAV contract ($11MM of the total $15MM cash is due in the next two years) so getting him back to the level of performance he showed in 2020-21 will be important. If the Kings could pair their current level of play with better play from their goalies, they’d certainly be even more thankful than they are now.
What should be on the Kings’ holiday wish list?
Productive extension talks with Vilardi.
Just a year ago, it looked as though Vilardi was trending toward “bust” territory. On one hand, the 2017 11th overall pick looked to have finally put the injury troubles that came to define his early years as a prospect behind him, and he was productive in the AHL with 38 points in 39 games.
But on the other hand, Vilardi was ineffective in 25 NHL games and scored just seven points in that span. Vilardi’s skating, which had been seen as a potential issue since his days as a Windsor Spitfire, looked as though it was going to hold him back from being an impactful offensive generator in the NHL.
This year, though, Vilardi has flipped that script with a hot start. While a six-game scoreless streak has lowered his overall totals, Vilardi still leads the Kings with 13 goals and is scoring at a 62-point pace.
It looks like Vilardi may have finally found his groove in the NHL, and if he has indeed done so, the price on his next contract will only go up from here. Vilardi will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights this summer, and with that on the horizon, the Kings should have productive extension talks with Vilardi on their holiday wishlist.
Vilardi has worked tirelessly to get past his earlier injury issues and become the productive scorer he has been so far this season.
The Kings never seemed to lose faith that Vilardi would eventually sort things out, and this year Vilardi has rewarded their faith. Next, it could be the Kings’ turn to reward Vilardi.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Cal Petersen Clears Waivers; Kings Make Several Roster Moves
3:31 PM: Add one more roster move to today’s avalanche of transactions in Southern California. Per a team release, the Kings have recalled forward Tyler Madden from the Reign.
This recall puts Madden, 23, in a position to make his NHL debut. The forward is perhaps best known as a former Vancouver Canucks prospect who was sent to Los Angeles as part of the team’s Tyler Toffoli trade.
Madden has scored five goals and eight points in 16 AHL games so far this year and scored 14 goals and 31 points in 48 games last year. Madden played his collegiate career at Northeastern University and scored 37 points in 27 games in his second and final season there.
1:15 PM: As expected, Cal Petersen has cleared waivers after a dreadful start to the season. The Los Angeles Kings have sent him to the minor leagues, while completing several other roster moves. Tobias Bjornfot, Pheonix Copley, and Samuel Fagemo have been recalled, while Rasmus Kupari and Jordan Spence are joining Petersen with the Ontario Reign.
It has been a precipitous fall from grace for Petersen, who signed a $15MM contract just over 14 months ago. That deal includes a $4MM signing bonus next year and $11MM total over the last two seasons, a price tag that many clubs would likely balk at if considering a claim. The fact is that he just hasn’t been good enough to justify that price tag, making it easy to understand why teams would pass over him on waivers.
If he can get his game back in order, there will be a path back to the NHL for Petersen. Copley doesn’t represent a huge upgrade, despite strong performances in the minor leagues. Through 31 NHL games, the 30-year-old has a .900 save percentage, and hasn’t played regularly at that level since 2018-19. While he can serve as a backup, for the time being, the Kings goaltending situation looks rather suspect at the moment.
By assigning Petersen to the minor leagues, Los Angeles will clear $1.125MM of cap space off the books, though a good chunk of that is eaten up by Copley’s $825K deal.
Los Angeles Kings Place Cal Petersen On Waivers
After allowing four goals on 16 shots last night in what ended up a 9-8 loss to the Seattle Kraken, Cal Petersen has been placed on waivers according to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. The Los Angeles Kings netminder has been brutal this year, posting an .868 save percentage through his first ten appearances. He is in the first season of a three-year, $15MM contract extension signed in the fall of 2021.
The Petersen story is an interesting one. Selected 129th overall by the Buffalo Sabres in 2013, he would go back to the USHL for a year after his draft, before heading to Notre Dame. Starring for the Irish for three years, he decided to leave school early and pursue a professional career. Petersen would ultimately decide not to sign with the Sabres and became a free agent, able to choose his destination.
Los Angeles is where he landed, which at the time seemed a bit of an odd choice. The team already had Jonathan Quick installed as the full-time starter and Jack Campbell was starting to come into his own as the backup. It appeared as though Petersen would be blocked from the NHL net for a while.
Because of injuries and poor play, however, it wouldn’t be long before Petersen was making his debut. In his second pro season, he played 11 games for the Kings and posted a .924, showing that they could have found their future starter. A trade of Campbell the next season, and more struggles from Quick meant Petersen was getting a chance, and he ran with it, posting a .916 save percentage in 54 games over his first three years.
Heading into last season, he was expected to split the work with Quick and the team awarded him with a shiny new three-year extension, despite his previous deal still having a year left. The Kings probably should have waited, as Petersen’s play deteriorated, with him posting an .895 save percentage over 37 appearances. When Los Angeles reached the playoffs, there was no doubt who would be starting for them, and it wasn’t Petersen.
Now, with an even worse performance through the early part of the year and higher expectations for the Kings, the team can’t wait around any more. They’ve now offered him up to anyone who wants to take on the whole contract and could send him to the minor leagues to get back on track if he clears.
It seems unlikely that any team in the league would bite, especially due to the back-loaded nature of the deal. Petersen is owed a $4MM signing bonus next season and then has a $6MM salary in year three, meaning any claiming team would be taking on a lot of financial risk for a goaltender who has struggled.