2025-26 Season Thread

[Kings4OT]

After 10 years of traceable stats, The Legend himself Gabriel Vilardi has finally finished developing and is close enough for me to concede he played a full season. I will however tell those of you that think he was the Kopitar replacement in anyway are way off base. Even in The Peg he doesnt take many FOs and is buster bad at it.

 

[PuckinUgly57]

After 10 years of traceable stats, The Legend himself Gabriel Vilardi has finally finished developing and is close enough for me to concede he played a full season. I will however tell those of you that think he was the Kopitar replacement in anyway are way off base. Even in The Peg he doesnt take many FOs and is buster bad at it.

Wouldn't have worked anyway in LA, I believe they moved him to RW and that's where he plays in Winnipeg on Scheifele's line with Connor.

 

[Stunner_At_Staples_Kings]

New York Rangers on Instagram: "One last time between the pipes for JQ32"

19K likes, 213 comments - nyrangers on April 13, 2026: "One last time between the pipes for JQ32".

www.instagram.com

It's awful to just see Quick in a Rangers montage. Still hate how Blake/Kings did him dirty. I actually don't think he's over it and there's no guarantee he even wants his jersey up in LA.

 

[davnlaguna]

Kings in playoffs
Still have to play the Flames and Nucks
Ducks have Preds and wild
Kings could pass the ducks and get the Oilers

 

[xis]

Whichever team wins the Pacific Division should burn their division championship banner. If they actually raise that banner it would be absolute insult to the rest of the league.

 

[PuckinUgly57]

TA, interesting snippet from Pronger and his book and the whole Edmonton trade and why he only stayed one year:

I know some of you have been waiting for this one. Here’s the full story.

The night I got traded to Edmonton, August 3, 2005, I’d gone to a friend’s 30th birthday party and consumed a plethora of alcoholic beverages. I had a good buzz going when I found out about the trade.

There’s your vulnerability. There’s your truth. Not exactly the story they put on hockey cards.

My phone rang. It was my agent. I ducked into a quiet room, half-drunk, thinking I was headed to Los Angeles, Florida, maybe Boston. Those were the teams we had heard whispers about.

“Edmonton,” he said.

Edmonton? Nobody mentioned f—ing Edmonton.

On our way home, Lauren and I stopped at a bookstore. She asked the clerk, “Do you have any books about Edmonton?”

The woman looked at her like she’d asked for books about the North Pole. “Why would anyone want to go there?”

Welcome to our new life.

Here’s where I fucked up — and where the story you think you know goes sideways. Lauren and I had talked it through that night. We talked about signing my qualifying offer with Edmonton — a place Lauren had never even been to yet — and decided to give it a try for one year.

Sign my qualifying offer — one year at $7.2 million — then reevaluate. We’d just lost an entire season to the lockout, and my contract had been rolled back 24 percent. Going from St. Louis to Edmonton for just one year? We could handle that. Then, we could evaluate and see what we wanted to do from there. Then she went to bed.

But at 1 a.m., my agent called back. “They want to talk contract. They don’t want you playing on a one-year deal. They cannot afford a contract with $7 million in the number.”

I should’ve said no. Should’ve said I need to sleep on it. Should’ve said I need to talk to my wife. Instead, sitting in my home office, several more beers deep, we started negotiating.

By 2 a.m., I’d agreed to five years.

Lauren went to bed thinking I would sign for one year. That was the plan. Test it out, see if Edmonton worked for our family, then decide.

“Five years,” I told her the next morning.

The silence that followed was louder than any arena crowd.

“You made a five-year commitment about our lives without talking to me? While you were drunk?”

No excuses. That was my standard. So I owned it.

“Yes. I f—ed up. I let my agent drive the conversation, I was drinking, and I made a decision that affects our entire family without including you. There’s no excuse for that.”

But here’s where standards really matter — not in avoiding mistakes, but in how you respond to them.

I could’ve blamed my agent. Could’ve blamed the alcohol. Could’ve blamed the injuries. Could’ve blamed the pressure. Instead, I owned it.

You want to talk about breaking trust? You want to talk about the moment a marriage gets tested? I was telling my wife that I’d just committed five years of her life to a city she’d never lived in, never been to, in a country she wasn’t from, with two kids under three, without even asking her opinion.

She was furious — and she had every right to be.

But here’s what the rumors got wrong, what the narrative missed: This wasn’t about Lauren hating Canada. This wasn’t about some of the bullshit rumors that never happened. This was about me making a massive life decision at 2 a.m. without consulting my partner. This was about trust. This was about respect. This was about me ******* up in a way that had nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with being a husband.

I knew it wasn’t working by November. Not the team … the situation. The promise I’d failed to keep.

I told my agent: “I’m done after this year. Start figuring out how to make it happen.”

From November to June, I played every game knowing I was leaving. Do you understand what that’s like? Suiting up every night for fans who love you, teammates who trust you, knowing you’re going to break their hearts? But I’d already broken a more important trust. I’d chosen my career over my family once. I wasn’t doing it again.

After we lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final in Carolina on June 19, 2006, the news broke almost immediately. I flew home the next morning and had our rental furniture picked up. Then I left the following day. Rumors spread — can’t be that he screwed up. Can’t be that he made a bad decision. Must be his American wife.

None of the rumors were accurate. The truth was: I’d made a promise to my wife, broken it and spent a year trying to make it right.

The Edmonton trade taught me something Hartford hadn’t: Sometimes you’re the bad guy in somebody else’s story. Sometimes you’re the one who has to eat the blame. Sometimes protecting what matters means letting people hate you.

I could have stayed an Oiler. Could have played out the contract. Could have kept collecting checks. And destroyed my marriage.

Instead, and I’ll say it (and do it) until the day I die: I choose family first

 

[PuckinUgly57]

Whichever team wins the Pacific Division should burn their division championship banner. If they actually raise that banner it would be absolute insult to the rest of the league.

Well the good news is LA can't win it. Not like they would have anyway, what isn't like 1991 their only division banner?

 

[CaptHowdy00]

NHL agent poll: Best and worst-run teams, biggest contract, future commissioner

The Athletic canvassed more than 20 top player agents in hockey for their thoughts on key big-picture questions from around the league.

www.nytimes.com

Outside of teams such as the Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars that have been perennial contenders of late, the up-and-coming Montreal Canadians earned a vote for their efficient rebuild and the Los Angeles Kings received praise for their work in player development, among other under-the-radar areas.

On the Kings: “The management do a very good job of taking care of their players, communicating to their players, and I think throughout the minor leagues, they do a very good job of running a similar system and working guys in.”

What am I missing? How is this a “well run organization”? Seriously, how many coaches have they been through since 2014? GMs have been horrible.

What is the easiest front office to deal with?​

On the Kings GM: “Kenny Holland is a pleasure.”

What is the hardest front office to deal with?​

On Anaheim: "When I start negotiating a contract with Anaheim, I tell my (partner), 'You take the first 10 calls with (assistant GM) Jeff Solomon because I don't want to waste my time.' Then when it gets to the end, I get involved because otherwise we're all wasting our f---ing time. They'll fight like tooth and nail for like 10 grand at the end of a deal. If you have a player at a million (point) one and you want it a million (point) 15, it's going to be a f---ing grind. Everything's a grind."

 

[CaptHowdy00]

NHL owner rankings: Grading every team, from Tampa Bay to Buffalo

Introducing The Athletic's first NHL owner rankings, based 50 percent on a fan survey and 50 percent on expert accounting.

www.nytimes.com

Overall
25. Philip Anschutz LOS ANGELES KINGS		C+
TEAM BREAKDOWN
Majority owner since	1995
Regular season rank	19th
Playoffs wins rank	27th
Stanley Cups	2
FAN BASE EVALUATION		RANK
Willingness to spend	4.02	24
Organizational stability	3.53	24
Treatment of the fan base	3.04	21
Franchise vision	2.26	30
CONFIDENCE IN OWNER, 2025 vs. 2024
Higher	2%	31
Same	39%	–
Lower	59%	29
FINAL SCORES
Fan Score	3.21
The Athletic Score	3.30

In the decade since winning their second Stanley Cup in three years back in 2014, the Kings have won just seven playoff games. That’s led to a fan base that is largely angry or apathetic, depending on who you ask.

More of their ire is directed at management, but ownership gets some shrapnel by association. Fans voted the Kings harshly in every category in our survey, but they finished especially poorly in franchise vision, where they ranked ahead of only the Buffalo Sabres.

Fan perspective: “Very hands-off but willing to spend. But lacking in vision. Too committed to legacy players in management and less focused on where the game is going.”

That’s what I’ve been saying about them.

 

[PuckinUgly57]

Damn did Bowness light up his team after an epic collapse down the stretch and mailing it in for G82.

https://x.com/BR_OpenIce/status/2044243155483005180?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2044243155483005180%7Ctwgr%5E275aa9ee8eb07ef8a7368be51cb020cf553cd73c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlakingsinsiderblogt_i%3D17816920https3A2F2Flakingsinsider.com2F3Fp3D178169t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Flakingsinsider.com2F20262F042F142Ffinal-kings-3-canucks-4-ot-anderson-laferriere-smith2Ft_e%3DFINAL20262382113B20Kings2032C20Canucks20420OT20262382113B20Anderson2C20Laferriere2C20Smitht_d%3DFINAL20-20Kings2032C20Canucks20420OT20-20Anderson2C20Laferriere2C20Smith20-20LA20Kings20Insidert_t%3DFINAL20262382113B20Kings2032C20Canucks20420OT20262382113B20Anderson2C20Laferriere2C20Smiths_o%3Ddescversion%3Da9ebd1973a09c18f572b0addf3bbd4b2

 

[xis]

NHL agent poll: Best and worst-run teams, biggest contract, future commissioner

The Athletic canvassed more than 20 top player agents in hockey for their thoughts on key big-picture questions from around the league.

www.nytimes.com

Outside of teams such as the Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars that have been perennial contenders of late, the up-and-coming Montreal Canadians earned a vote for their efficient rebuild and the Los Angeles Kings received praise for their work in player development, among other under-the-radar areas.

On the Kings: “The management do a very good job of taking care of their players, communicating to their players, and I think throughout the minor leagues, they do a very good job of running a similar system and working guys in.”

What am I missing? How is this a “well run organization”? Seriously, how many coaches have they been through since 2014? GMs have been horrible.

What is the easiest front office to deal with?​

On the Kings GM: “Kenny Holland is a pleasure.”

What is the hardest front office to deal with?​

On Anaheim: "When I start negotiating a contract with Anaheim, I tell my (partner), 'You take the first 10 calls with (assistant GM) Jeff Solomon because I don't want to waste my time.' Then when it gets to the end, I get involved because otherwise we're all wasting our f---ing time. They'll fight like tooth and nail for like 10 grand at the end of a deal. If you have a player at a million (point) one and you want it a million (point) 15, it's going to be a f---ing grind. Everything's a grind."

It's from a poll taking with agents. When an organization gives a guy like Cody Ceci a four-year, $18 million contract that team is "easy" to deal with for you. On a more serious note, the organization isn't run badly in terms of facilities, player support etc. They have trouble drafting of late and can't develop players. The Agents don't care about those things as much.

 

[PuckinUgly57]

Knights Krapen at 7pm, definitely going to watch that. We should have a better idea of seeding after this game.

EDIT: nevermind l, doesn't affect LA anyway. I thought for some reason LA could tie Vegas for points (and still lose) they can't even catch them, Vegas already has 93 with one game left while max LA points is 92.

Tomorrow night has all the deciding games but it's looking like WC2 and Avalanche.

 

[PuckinUgly57]

Forgot to mention this, the conditional third round 2026 pick sent to TO in the Laughton deal is now a second in 2026 because the Kings qualified for the POs.

They haven't updated it yet but Kings still showing two seconds in 2026 but one will be gone.

 

[xis]

Knights Krapen at 7pm, definitely going to watch that. We should have a better idea of seeding after this game.

EDIT: nevermind l, doesn't affect LA anyway. I thought for some reason LA could tie Vegas for points (and still lose) they can't even catch them, Vegas already has 93 with one game left while max LA points is 92.

Tomorrow night has all the deciding games but it's looking like WC2 and Avalanche.

I could see both Vegas and Edmonton tanking their last game each in hopes to play L.A. in the 1st round.

 

[Kings4OT]

I could see both Vegas and Edmonton tanking their last game each in hopes to play L.A. in the 1st round.

Not sure Edm wants to do that, if Ducks and Kings win with an Oiler loss I believe it would be Ducks/Kings and Maccar vs McDri....this would make this crappy season 100% worth it

 

[davnlaguna]

Kings lose the play the Avs no matter what others do
If ducks and Edmonton win kings play the Avs
No matter what
If one of both lose
If kings win and ducks win, Kings play the ducks
If kings win and oilers win, kings play oilers
If kings win and both others lose kings play the oilers

 

[LAKINGSFAN]

Somneone had this on Facebook. I thought I would share. LOL

 

[Kings4OT]

Somneone had this on Facebook. I thought I would share. LOL

View attachment 426780

I saw that, but I think it should be rObiTailLe
"r O bi T ail L e"

 

[PuckinUgly57]

I saw that, but I think it should be rObiTailLe
"r O bi T ail L e"

"We were right there..."

My personal belief: the Kings may be the 3v3 kings, but PO OTs will be 5v5. They will struggle if these games get there.

There won't be Buster breakaways with four players missing on the ice, no cutsie plays.

 

[xis]

I saw that, but I think it should be rObiTailLe
"r O bi T ail L e"

and because why not......