2026 Season Preview: Los Angeles Kings
Los Angeles were the Kings of the overtime point last season. Can they continue to find a way to stay in the playoff picture moving forward?
In the 2025-26 season, 19 games the Los Angeles Kings played were determined in 3-on-3 overtime. In addition to that, 14 were decided by a shootout. In total, they picked up 20 “loser points” by falling in either an overtime or shootout. Had those games counted as standard losses, their record would have been 35-47, surely leaving them out of the playoff picture.
2025-26 Outcome
Regular Season Results: 35-27-20
Postseason Results: Lost 4-0 to Colorado
This past season was, statistically, the Kings’ worst of their last five years, in which there has been a consistent theme of first round playoff exits. With nothing to show for the 12 years that followed their second Stanley Cup championship in three years in the early 2010s, the Kings are a patchwork quilt of aging talent, homegrown personnel, and mix-and-match free agents, resulting in them having a bit of an identity crisis.
With Anze Kopitar hanging up the skates, it becomes all the more important that the Kings figure out what kind of team they want to be sooner rather than later.
Who’s In and Who’s Out
It’s hard to feel overly optimistic about Los Angeles when you look at who’s out versus who’s in.
Zuccarello is a good pick up for them, and perhaps even an upgrade from Andrei Kuzmenko, but age is a big concern factor. Speaking of age, Corey Perry enters the season at age 41. Good for him for continuing his career this long and constantly adapting to new roles with new teams, but I have my reservations about how much he really helps a team in Los Angeles’ position. The same goes for Erik Haula. He’s a great role player and is very useful in the bottom-six, but this late in his career and on the 13th oldest team in the league, it’s hard to see him having a tremendous impact on a team that’s pretty weak down the middle.
The bottom line is that losing a player like Anze Kopitar is huge. This is once in a generation, face of a franchise player. You don’t just find a way to replace those guys overnight. They’ll need Quinton Byfield to really step up, but even at his best, it’s going to be a tremendous challenge trying to find a way to replicate what Kopitar brought to the Kings game—both on and off the ice.
