Los Angeles Kings Stand Pat as the Post-Kopitar Blueprint Comes Into Focus

The Los Angeles Kings didn't make a single roster move this week, and somehow it was still one of the more revealing stretches of their summer. A jersey-number announcement quietly confirmed just how much this team changed in July, the club's longtime draft guru spent an afternoon explaining why an 11-player draft class might matter more than anything that happened in free agency, and the cap sheet sat there at a full 23 contracts with less than $2 million to spare. If you're looking for the latest Los Angeles Kings news, the headline is this: the roster is essentially done, the Peter Laviolette era is locked and loaded, and the first season in two decades without Anze Kopitar starts September 30 in Denver.

This Week in Los Angeles Kings News: Numbers and Scouts

Start with the fun stuff. On July 18 the team announced jersey numbers for its new arrivals, and there was one genuine piece of franchise history buried in the list: Corey Perry will wear No. 90, the first player ever to do so in a Kings uniform. Perry wore No. 10 during his first stint in Los Angeles before the March deadline trade to Tampa Bay, so the man returned to the same locker room within four months and still needed a new number. Elsewhere, Scott Laughton takes No. 21, Mats Zuccarello gets No. 36, Erik Haula lands No. 56, and Erik Gustafsson will wear No. 64 for the first time in his NHL career.

The meatier item came July 23, when director of amateur scouting Mark Yannetti sat down with LA Kings Insider to break down the draft class. On first-rounder Elton Hermansson, he didn't bother with scout-speak hedging: "his skill level alone is probably top six, top five in the draft." On second-rounder Liam Lefebvre, he reached for the franchise's favorite comparison bin: "Dwight King was an under the radar guy and Matt Roy was an under the radar guy." More on that class below, because it's the clearest signal of where this front office thinks the organization is thin.

One more note on the quiet: none of the 15 players who filed for salary arbitration league-wide is a King. No hearings, no deadlines, no drama. The roster stands at 23 of 23.

How July Rebuilt the Bottom of the Lineup

General manager Ken Holland's free-agent work was all about depth, age be damned. The signings, in rough order of significance:

• Scott Laughton, C — re-signed for three years at a $3.5 million AAV after arriving from Toronto at the deadline
• Erik Haula, C — two years, reportedly around $3.6 million per, after a 38-point season in Nashville
• Mats Zuccarello, W — one year at a $1 million base with a reported $5 million bonus once he plays 10 games, lured away from Minnesota after a 54-point season
• Corey Perry, W — one year, $1 million, back for round two
• Erik Gustafsson and Scott Perunovich — one-year deals adding puck-moving depth on the blue line

Zuccarello at 38 and Perry at 41 make this the league's most aggressive bet on gray hair, but the logic is coherent: Kopitar's retirement and Andrei Kuzmenko's departure to Pittsburgh ripped experience and skill out of the middle of the lineup, and none of these deals carries risk beyond 2028. Holland has also said publicly he may move one or two forwards before camp because of the sheer number of bodies, so don't assume the group you see today is the group that flies to Colorado.

Life After Kopitar, Under Laviolette

Context matters here, because last season was a mess with a bow on it. The Kings finished with 90 points, fourth in the Pacific, and got swept out of the first round by Colorado — a fourth consecutive first-round exit, this one without even a home win to show for it. Jim Hiller was fired as head coach on March 1, D.J. Smith dragged the team into the playoffs as the interim, and the front office's February swing-for-the-fences move — acquiring Artemi Panarin from the Rangers with a two-year, $11 million AAV extension attached — didn't change the ending. Then Kopitar played his final game in the April 26 elimination loss and walked off into retirement after two decades as the franchise's spine.

The reset came in June. Peter Laviolette, hired on a reported three-year deal, brings 846 career wins, a 2006 Stanley Cup, and a recent track record of getting immediate offense out of veteran groups — Panarin's 120-point season in New York came under him, which is not a coincidence anyone in El Segundo is pretending to ignore. The staff around him is nearly all new: Phil Housley as associate head coach, Chris Hajt promoted from AHL Ontario, and Ray Whitney — who won that 2006 Cup playing for Laviolette — taking his first NHL coaching job.

The Draft Class Holland Needed

The Kings made 11 selections at the June draft in Buffalo, their largest class of the seven-round era, and it wasn't an accident. Years of win-now trades thinned the prospect pool, and the deadline deals that sent Warren Foegele to Ottawa and Perry to Tampa Bay were made specifically to recoup second-round picks. Hermansson, taken 19th overall, headlines the group: he led the U18 World Championship in scoring, was named its best forward, and signed his three-year entry-level contract on July 15. He won't attend training camp — the plan is another season with MoDo in Sweden. Behind him sit Lefebvre, Slovak defenseman Adam Goljer (Yannetti: "he's able to quickly separate, make a pass and the puck's going North really fast"), and eight more swings spread across four countries and five leagues. This is what restocking looks like.

A Cap Sheet With No Slack

The league's ceiling rises to $104 million for 2026-27, and the Kings are pressed right against it — roughly $102.2 million committed, leaving about $1.8 million in space. Panarin and Drew Doughty each carry $11 million hits, and Adrian Kempe's new extension kicks in this season at $10.625 million, giving Los Angeles three cap hits of $10 million or more. That's the real reason the summer shopping list was all one-year, low-dollar deals, and it's why Holland's musing about trading a forward or two reads less like idle talk and more like arithmetic.

Key Dates on the Los Angeles Kings Calendar

The NHL moves to an 84-game schedule this season — the first since 1993-94 — and the Kings' version of it has some texture:

• Sept. 30: Season opener at Colorado, the team that ended their spring
• Oct. 6: Home opener vs. the Florida Panthers at Crypto.com Arena
• Nov. 27-28: Freeway Face-Off home-and-home with Anaheim
• Dec. 30: Jim Hiller returns with Toronto
• Jan. 6: Alex Ovechkin and Washington visit
• Late January: a season-long seven-game road trip, wrapped around the league's eight-day break and the Feb. 6 All-Star Game

Training camp dates haven't been announced, but with a September 30 opener, expect players on the ice in mid-September, and note that two seven-game home stands (starting Oct. 29 and Dec. 30) give this team a real chance to bank points early.

So that's the state of the Los Angeles Kings this week: nothing signed, nothing traded, and yet the picture is sharper than it's been all summer. A win-now core with three $10 million-plus forwards and defensemen, a bench boss hired specifically to fix a stale attack, a bottom six full of guys who've seen everything, and — finally — a refilled prospect cupboard behind it all. Whether that adds up to a fifth straight playoff trip with a different ending is the question Laviolette was hired to answer, and the first evidence arrives September 30 against the team that swept them.