A Quiet Week, a Transformed Team: The Los Angeles Kings Begin Life After Kopitar

The Los Angeles Kings gave you almost nothing to chew on this week, and honestly, that silence says plenty. The roster work is done, the checkbook is closed, and what's left is the part of the calendar where a franchise sits with its choices. And the Los Angeles Kings have made some enormous ones this summer: they said goodbye to Anze Kopitar after 20 seasons, handed the bench to Peter Laviolette, and built their 2026-27 hopes around a full season of Artemi Panarin. The quietest week of the Kings' offseason is a good time to take stock of the loudest one in years.

How the 2025-26 Season Set the Table

Start with the wreckage. The Kings finished 35-27-20 for 90 points, fourth in the Pacific Division, and that middle number deserves a second look — twenty overtime and shootout losses. Twenty. That is not a record, that is a cry for help. A team that loses 20 games past regulation is a team that can hang around with anybody and close out almost nobody, and the playoffs confirmed it: Colorado swept them out of the first round, 4-0, making it five straight seasons the Kings have been eliminated in round one dating back to 2022. The organization did not treat that gently. Jim Hiller was fired midseason, D.J. Smith kept the seat warm on an interim basis, and on June 9 the Kings hired Peter Laviolette, who arrives with 846 wins across 23 NHL seasons and a 2006 Stanley Cup from his Carolina days. Whatever you think of hiring a coach in his sixties to fix a team that keeps dying in April, it is at minimum a bet on structure and accountability from a guy who has seen everything.

The Panarin Bet, Year One in Full

The most fascinating player in a Kings sweater next season did not sign here in July — he arrived in February. Los Angeles acquired Artemi Panarin from the New York Rangers on February 4 in exchange for prospect Liam Greentree and two conditional draft picks, with Panarin signing a two-year extension carrying an $11 million average annual value. The early returns were exactly what you'd expect from one of the best playmaking wingers of his generation: 27 points in 26 regular-season games. Panarin said afterward he "never wanted to be anywhere else" but Los Angeles, which is the sort of thing players say, but the contract term suggests he meant it. Now comes the real test — a full 82-game season, at 34 years old, as the offensive engine of a team that badly needs one. Adrian Kempe led the Kings with 73 points (36 goals) last season and Quinton Byfield chipped in 49; if Panarin gives them a point-per-game campaign on Byfield's wing, the math on this roster changes completely.

Life After Kopitar and the Captaincy Question

The Kings will open training camp without Anze Kopitar for the first time since 2006, and there is no way to shrug that off. He retired after the playoff exit as the franchise's all-time leader with 1,316 points across 20 seasons — two Cups, two Selkes, and roughly two decades of being the most reliable center in team history. Beyond the production, his exit vacates the captaincy, and that conversation has hovered over the whole summer. The sentimental and probably correct answer is Drew Doughty, the last remaining piece of the 2012 and 2014 championship rosters, nearly 1,300 games and over 700 points into a career spent entirely in black and silver. The complication: Doughty is entering the final season of his eight-year, $88 million contract with no extension in hand. Handing the "C" to a player who could walk in a year is awkward; handing it to Adrian Kempe or Mikey Anderson while Doughty is still in the room might be worse. Laviolette's first genuinely delicate decision arrives before opening night.

Grading the Los Angeles Kings' Free-Agency Haul

General manager Ken Holland worked with a reported budget of roughly $11 million and spent it on experience — a lot of experience. The headline additions from July 1:

• Mats Zuccarello, one year at a $1 million base loaded with performance bonuses, coming off 54 points in 59 games for Minnesota at age 38.
• Erik Haula, two years at $3.6 million per, after 38 points in 81 games with Nashville.
• Corey Perry, back for another year at $1 million plus playoff bonuses at age 41, after the Kings traded him to Tampa Bay in March.
• Erik Gustafsson, one year, $1 million, following a monster 37-points-in-39-games AHL season with Grand Rapids.
• Depth adds Lane Pederson, Jan Jenik, and Scott Perunovich on two-way deals.

The retention work mattered just as much. Scott Laughton re-upped for three years at $3.5 million annually, and Brandt Clarke — the young defenseman who looks like the future of the blue line — signed a five-year, $37 million extension. Meanwhile Andrei Kuzmenko left for Pittsburgh, a cap casualty of the Panarin acquisition. If your first reaction is that Zuccarello, Perry, and Haula have a combined age north of 110, you are not wrong. But on short money, they're low-risk bets on skill and professionalism for a team whose problem was finishing close games, not showing up for them.

The Holes Laviolette Inherits

Two problems survived the summer intact. The first is second-line center. Byfield presumably takes the top job with Panarin and Kempe on his flanks, but behind him the middle of the ice is a patchwork of Laughton, Haula, and hope — Kopitar's two-way minutes don't get replaced by anyone currently on this roster. The second is goaltending. Darcy Kuemper posted an .891 save percentage across 50 appearances last season, and his 19-14-15 record is the statistical fingerprint of all those overtime losses. Anton Forsberg was actually the steadier hand at .909 in 36 games. If Kuemper doesn't rebound, no amount of veteran wing depth matters. There's also the defense beyond Clarke and Mikey Anderson, where Gustafsson is a power-play specialist, Doughty is 36, and the group that got swept by Colorado returns largely intact. Laviolette's system demands pace and structure; whether this blue line can supply either is the quiet question of camp.

What's Next for the Los Angeles Kings

The July development camp came and went with all eleven of the Kings' 2026 draft picks in attendance, and now the calendar goes dormant until rosters report for training camp in mid-September, with the regular season opening in October. Between now and then, keep an eye on two storylines: whether Holland and Doughty make progress on an extension, and whether the captaincy gets settled before camp or becomes a daily media scrum in El Segundo.

So that's the state of Los Angeles Kings news as August begins: a quiet week sitting on top of a transformed franchise. No Kopitar, a Hall of Fame-track coach behind the bench, a superstar winger with a point to prove, and a fanbase that has watched five consecutive first-round exits and would very much like the sixth season to go differently. The Kings didn't get younger this summer, but they got clearer about what they are — a win-now roster with a two-year Panarin window. Camp opens in about six weeks. Then we find out if clarity is enough.