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Los Angeles Kings
2026-27 season preview

Los Angeles Kings

45-30-999 pts7th of 32
Goals for
3.08
29th in the league
Goals against
2.92
7th in the league
Power play
17.0%
28th in the league

Kodo projects the Los Angeles Kings for 45-30-9 (99 pts), carried by 6th-ranked expected defense. In a points-only league, the fantasy value runs through Artemi Panarin and Adrian Kempe on PP1. 1 core skater projects to rise and 3 to slip. Darcy Kuemper is the projected starter.

Your categories · using the preset above
Breakout watch
projects 45.2 pts on a rising role (L2·PP2)
Regression watch
finishing/on-ice luck ran hot — expect some pullback off last year's line
Buy-low
underlying shot/chance rates outran the results — a discount vs name value
The crease
Darcy Kuemper
Darcy Kuemper projects the crease (~53 starts), but Anton Forsberg (~31) makes it more timeshare than lock
Sleeper
projects 8 pts
Contents · 12 sections

Latest

lines, injuries and roster moves 1 / 12
TransactionFrancesco Pinelli added to LAK roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
TransactionHampton Slukynsky added to LAK roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
TransactionErik Portillo added to LAK roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
TransactionJared Woolley added to LAK roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
TransactionOtto Salin added to LAK roster · NHL transactions2026-08-20
Each item names its source. Kodo's own projected line changes are not reported here.
Carried into camp
Kevin FialaProbable for start of season — Lower Leg · CBS2026-03-06 · 168d
Reported more than 30 days ago, so listed as a standing condition rather than news. The date is the one the injury feed carries, which is the game the player was expected to miss — not the day anything was last checked.

Where this team sits

last season vs projection 2 / 12
25-2626-27Change
Goals for2.6829th3.0818th+0.40▲11
Goals against2.98th2.925th+0.02▲3
Power play1728th17.7326th+0.73▲2
Penalty kill74.630th79.0724th+4.47▲6
Faceoffs49.817th48.5730th-1.23▼13
Points percentage0.54920th0.5897th+0.040▲13
How these projections are made
Both bars share one scale per row — the wider of the two league ranges — so a bar that moves is a number that moved. The grey tick is that column's league average, and the arrow is the change in league rank. Goals-against and expected-goals-against rank ascending, so low is good and green always means improved.
Goals for, goals against and points percentage come from the roster: summed player projections over the real 26-27 schedule, last season's expected goals against regressed toward the league and adjusted for projected goaltending, and a game-by-game simulation of that schedule.
The special teams are projected from how much each number actually carries over year to year, measured across 298 team-season pairs going back to 2010-11. The power play uses one prior season shrunk 0.36; the penalty kill uses three, weighted .5/.3/.2 and shrunk 0.38. Special teams barely persist, so a league-worst penalty kill is mostly bad luck and comes most of the way back, while the faceoff dot is a repeatable team skill. How far a club moves depends on how far from the mean it started: Vancouver sits near league average on both the power play and the faceoff dot and barely shifts, while Edmonton's 30.6% power play comes back to the middle and this penalty kill, worst in the league, is the biggest riser of all 32.
The penalty kill averages three seasons because one measures it so badly. Split a single season's spread into ability and sampling noise — a kill rate is a binomial over about 250 opportunities, so the noise is known rather than guessed — and only 33% of the gap between clubs is real. Divide the year-over-year correlation by that and the ability underneath comes out near 1.0: penalty killing is almost perfectly persistent and merely hard to see in one season. The cure for a noisy measurement is more of it, and three seasons beat one by 4.3% out of sample. Because averaging reorders clubs, that row's rank is a real forecast; the rows marked = are single-season regressions, which compress the values but keep them in order, so their rank is last season's by construction and only the value is a prediction.
A roster-aware faceoff model was built and rejected on the evidence. Draw counts are not stored, but they can be recovered exactly from the per-game percentages, and with real draws a club's number reconstructs from its own centres. It still does not predict better: given a club's first half to learn from and even handed the second half's draw distribution, it scored 2.24 against the plain regression's 2.26 across 32 clubs, and the best blend of the two puts almost no weight on it. A team's faceoff percentage already carries who takes its draws. Expected goals has no team projection at all, so that row shows last season alone.

How last season went

in quarters — where the season was won and lost 3 / 12
They held about the same pace all year-2 points of win percentage between the first quarter and the last.
Oct–Nov10-0711-17
50%10-10
for2.80
against2.85
Nov–Jan11-2001-05
38%8-13
for2.62
against2.67
Jan–Mar01-0703-05
35%7-13
for2.45
against3.45
Mar–Apr03-0704-16
48%10-11
for3.10
against3.10
Why the shape matters more than the total
Every rate on the board above is a season average, and an average cannot tell a club that was good all year from one that was excellent for six weeks and ordinary after. Those are different teams to draft into: the second one probably changed — an injury, a call-up, a coach — and whatever changed is likelier to still be true in October than the average is.
Read it against the roster movement section. A club that faded and then lost its best defenceman is not going to bounce; one that faded while carrying injuries and got everybody back is a different case entirely.
Quarters are equal shares of the games actually played, so the windows differ slightly by club depending on scheduling.

Schedule shape

games per week and per month, light nights, back-to-backs 4 / 12
Light nights
23.8%25th
20 of 84 games
Four-game weeks
85th
5 weeks of two or fewer
Back-to-backs
104th
roughly one backup start each
Playoff-week games
109th
over 3 weeks · 1 back-to-back
Games per week
2026-09-28on light nights2027-04-05
Games by month
Sep*
1
Oct
12
Nov
11
Dec
14
Jan
15
Feb
11
Mar
15
Apr*
5
* part of a month — the season opens and closes mid-month.
Why these three and not a schedule score
They answer different formats, so combining them would hide the answer rather than give it. Four-game weeks decide weekly-lineup leagues: the same player produces a third more in a four-game week than a three-game one, and clubs differ by several such weeks across a season. Light nights decide daily leagues and streaming — a light night is one carrying no more than the league's median number of games (6 this season), so your man is a far larger share of everything available than he is on a sixteen-game Tuesday. Playoff-week games counts the last three weeks of the season excluding the final one — most head-to-head leagues have crowned a champion before the NHL finishes, and that last week is short and full of rested stars. Back-to-backs decide the crease, because a starter rarely takes both ends, so each one is roughly a start handed to the backup.
Ranks are against all 32 clubs, and the whole thing is read off the published slate — no projection is involved.

Projected lineup

lines, pairs and both special teams, with what each man projects for 5 / 12
Lineup notes
This is the lineup the club can ice on opening night, not its best-case group. A player expected to miss more than the opening month is left out and his slot goes to whoever takes it — he keeps his projection below, he is out of the lineup, not out of the season.
Projected ice time totals 298.1 of the 300 skater-minutes a game has. Power play 3.16′ on the first unit, 1.79′ on the second; the kill 2.35′, 1.67′ and 1′ across three units — all measured.Change this lineup →

Forward lines

L1
LW
Artemi PanarinG: 94th percentileA: 96th percentileGA
84 pts · 18.0′
29G · 55A · 212SOG · 13HIT · 14BLK
C
Quinton ByfieldG: 89th percentileA: 81st percentileGA
55 pts · 18.3′
25G · 30A · 175SOG · 71HIT · 39BLK
RW
Adrian KempeG: 96th percentileA: 88th percentileGA
71 pts · 18.0′
32G · 38A · 219SOG · 116HIT · 37BLK
L2
LW
Kevin FialaG: 93rd percentileA: 82nd percentileGA
59 pts · 16.6′
28G · 31A · 201SOG · 56HIT · 28BLK
C
Alex LaferriereG: 85th percentileA: 72nd percentileGA
45 pts · 16.2′
22G · 24A · 201SOG · 208HIT · 45BLK
RW
Mats ZuccarelloG: 74th percentileA: 88th percentileGA
53 pts · 16.6′
16G · 38A · 123SOG · 21HIT · 33BLK
L3
LW
Trevor MooreG: 76th percentileA: 67th percentileGA
38 pts · 15.7′
17G · 21A · 166SOG · 68HIT · 38BLK
C
Erik HaulaG: 65th percentileA: 56th percentileGA
29 pts · 16.3′
12G · 17A · 108SOG · 100HIT · 42BLK
RW
Alex TurcotteG: 41st percentileA: 40th percentileGA
17 pts · 12.2′
6G · 11A · 70SOG · 49HIT · 32BLK
L4
LW
Joel ArmiaG: 57th percentileA: 40th percentileGA
20 pts · 11.7′
9G · 11A · 86SOG · 69HIT · 35BLK
C
Scott LaughtonG: 60th percentileA: 38th percentileGA
21 pts · 13.1′
10G · 10A · 103SOG · 135HIT · 45BLK
RW
Jared WrightG: 37th percentileA: 10th percentileGA
3 pts · 10.7′
0G · 3A · 43SOG · 71HIT · 30BLK

Defence pairs

D1
LD
Drew DoughtyG: 35th percentileA: 54th percentileGA
21 pts · 21.2′
5G · 16A · 83SOG · 51HIT · 72BLK
RD
Mikey AndersonG: 31st percentileA: 49th percentileGA
18 pts · 20.8′
4G · 14A · 68SOG · 115HIT · 128BLK
D2
LD
Brandt ClarkeG: 49th percentileA: 79th percentileGA
36 pts · 21.0′
7G · 29A · 137SOG · 26HIT · 141BLK
RD
Joel EdmundsonG: 20th percentileA: 45th percentileGA
15 pts · 19.2′
3G · 13A · 80SOG · 86HIT · 96BLK
D3
LD
Brian DumoulinG: 13th percentileA: 37th percentileGA
12 pts · 16.5′
2G · 10A · 55SOG · 47HIT · 87BLK
RD
Cody CeciG: 10th percentileA: 25th percentileGA
8 pts · 16.5′
1G · 7A · 64SOG · 52HIT · 117BLK

Special teams

Scratches & depth

Roster movement & minutes

who changed, and the minutes freed 6 / 12
Life after Kuzmenko
Andrei Kuzmenko played his last game for this club on 2026-02-25 and is now in PIT. Team scoring went 2.56 2.96 goals a game over the 25 games after.
Defence — who took the minutes
toiafterΔp/gmafterΔ
Dumoulin18.516-2.50.210.2-0.01
Anderson2021.8+1.80.160.44+0.28
Clarke19.320.9+1.60.510.44-0.07
Doughty22.923.4+0.50.290.39+0.11
Edmundson18.418.7+0.30.280.280
Forwards
toiafterΔp/gmafterΔ
Moore15.918.3+2.40.330.71+0.38
Laferriere17.420.4+3.00.460.72+0.26
Ward10.98.4-2.50.270.14-0.12
Armia14.512.5-2.00.380.33-0.05
Kopitar18.520.2+1.70.550.6+0.05
Not a controlled experiment — the same window also saw Malott leave 2026-04-09, Wright arrive 2026-03-02, Joseph leave 2026-04-16, Foegele leave 2026-03-02, Laughton arrive 2026-03-07. Read the deltas as role changes, not pure cause and effect.
In Pinelli, Slukynsky, Portillo, Woolley, Salin, Kirsanov, Hicketts, Dvorak, Ziemmer, Wright, Slukynsky, Booth
Callup Hermansson, Brzustewicz, Slukynsky, Connors, Dvorak, Salin
Out Kopitar, Kuzmenko, Danault→MTL, Foegele→OTT, Malott, Moverare, Joseph
Fiala19.117.9 -1.2
Zuccarello18.617.3 -1.3
Byfield2018.7 -1.3
Doughty23.121.8 -1.3
Armia14.112.8 -1.3
Panarin20.819.3 -1.5
Dumoulin17.816.3 -1.5
Laughton14.412.7 -1.7
Biggest projected minute changes either way — a club's ice time is a fixed budget, so the departures above are what free it up. Full board →

Camp battles

contested roles, priced in points 7 / 12
First lineUNDERDEPLOYED4 pts at stake
holds it
Quinton Byfield
55 proj pts · 18.7′ · 2.7′ PP
vs
pushing
Kevin Fiala
59 proj pts · 17.9′ · 3.4′ PP
Quinton Byfieldmodel favours the challengerKevin Fiala
1.40 more min/game on L1 (role-model baseline), at the challenger's own scoring rate over a full season. Power-play gaps come from measured PP minutes last season; even-strength gaps from the role model that drives every projection on this page.

Power play

17% last season · who it runs through, and what is left of it 8 / 12
Conversion
17%
on the man advantage
PP goals
49
649 shots
Expected goals
56.7
-7.7 vs actual
Shooting
7.6%
of PP shots go in
Who it runs through · last season
PlayerPP/gmSharePPGPPAPPP/60ixGIPPFocal
Panarin3.0947%4192317.157.459%3.49
Perry2.6941%58135.795.953%1.17
Fiala3.3251%413175.494.572%1.1
Clarke2.4137%211133.94256%0.79
Byfield2.2434%47113.734.561%0.75
Kempe2.9946%48122.975.656%0.6
Laferriere1.7927%3252.044.153%0.41
Armia0.812%1011.121.80.21
Moore0.9114%0110.950.70.19
Doughty1.8428%0110.451.548%0.09
What IPP, focal and ixG mean
IPP is the share of the power-play goals he was on the ice for that he got a point on. It is the direct form of “the play runs through him”: two men can take the same unit minutes while one touches the puck on every goal and the other watches from the far circle. League average on the power play is 59%. It is computed from the on-ice record of every goal, corrected for the ~18% of goals with no on-ice row and shrunk toward the positional mean for thin samples, so it cannot exceed 1.
Focal is the older, cruder version — his share of the team's power-play points over his share of its minutes. It is team-relative, so it moves when a teammate is injured; IPP does not. ixG is the expected goals from his own shots on the man advantage. Minutes are measured, not modelled.
Projected PP1Kempe16 PPP (12 last yr)Clarke11 PPP (13 last yr)Fiala25 PPP (17 last yr)Panarin25 PPP (23 last yr)Zuccarello20 PPP (21 last yr)
Projected PP2Byfield12 PPP (11 last yr)Laferriere5 PPP (5 last yr)Doughty4 PPP (1 last yr)Moore3 PPP (1 last yr)Haula8 PPP (12 last yr)

Hits, blocks and the rest

what a banger league is won with 9 / 12
Hits
195822nd
projected, this roster · of 32
Blocks
139519th
projected, this roster · of 32
Shots
266612th
projected, this roster · of 32
Penalty minutes
75522nd
projected, this roster · of 32
Faceoff wins
185328th
projected, this roster · of 32
H+B
335322nd
projected, this roster · of 32
S+H+B
601819th
projected, this roster · of 32
Who supplies them
PlayerGPHits/60Blks/60PKPIMFOW+/-H+BS+H+B
Laferriere L2·PP28020810.2451.961.822141+4253454
Anderson D1781154.041284.842.725+9243310
Helenius5815920.38212.4144132-2180224
Laughton L4691357.88452.732.234397-7179282
Clarke D2·PP171261.111416.840.150+6167304
Edmundson D270863.84964.392.523+10182263
Kempe L1·PP1801164.87371.50.85238+14153372
Ceci D380521.541174.742.018-3169233
Haula L3·PP2721005.23422.262.151434-8143250
Doughty D1·PP262511.88722.741.434+5123206
Dumoulin D376471.48873.661.519-1134189
Byfield L1·PP280712.51391.672.346440+4110285
Armia L466694.7352.541.52522+0104190
Fiala L2·PP177562.19281.350.24411-984285
Moore L3·PP276682.97381.871.5135+4106272
Wright L455716.18304.120.270101144
Gustafsson6237480.125-1086155
Slukynsky45622516087119
Turcotte L363494.57322.9622197-281151
Perunovich46235014-173100
Perry53241.82151.220.1517+139107
Ward44486.67151.58135063113
What actually moves these numbers
Penalty-kill time is the strongest driver of blocks we can measure. Across 1,504 consecutive season pairs, a skater who gains a minute of shorthanded time a game adds a median 9.5 blocks over 84 games — a defenceman 16 — and the effect runs monotonically the other way too: lose a minute and it is −15.6, or −25.9 for a defenceman. The PK column is here for that reason.
But it is mostly the minutes, not the man. Shorthanded time correlates +0.52 with blocks per 60 across players and only +0.14 within the same player year to year, which says coaches pick shot-blockers for the kill more than the kill turns anyone into one. A player promoted onto PK1 gains blocks because he is on the ice for more shots, not because he changed — so price the ice time, not a breakout.
Hits run opposite to ice time. Total minutes correlate −0.57 with hits per 60, and −0.60 among forwards: the fourth line hits, the first line does not. So a rate beats a total here more than in any other category, which is what the /60 columns are for — a checker on eleven minutes at 12 hits per 60 is worth more than a first-liner at 5 on nineteen, and their season totals can look identical.
Power-play time predicts the absence of all of it — −0.43 with hits per 60, −0.47 with blocks, −0.26 with penalty minutes. The men who run a power play are not the men who supply a banger roster, which is why the two sections of this page rarely name anybody twice.
Faceoff wins are a volume category. They track draws taken far more than win rate, so the man to want is the one taking the most — normally the first-line centre and whoever takes defensive-zone draws on the kill.
Measured on 2022-23 through 2025-26, skaters with 40+ games and 200+ minutes at both ends of each pair.

Contracts and the cap

what the roster costs, and who reaches the market 10 / 12
$104.6Mcommitted · 26 of 26 on file
9reach the market after this season

Pending free agents · this summer

Drew DoughtyDUFA$11.00M21 pts
Darcy KuemperGUFA$5.25M
Joel ArmiaRUFA$2.50M20 pts
Anton ForsbergGUFA$2.25M
Corey PerryRUFA$1.00M19 pts
Mats ZuccarelloRUFA$1.00M53 pts
Erik GustafssonDUFA$1.00M17 pts
Scott PerunovichDUFA$0.85M7 pts
Alex TurcotteCRFA$0.80M17 pts

Free the summer after

Artemi PanarinL$11.00M84 pts
Trevor MooreL$4.20M38 pts
Alex LaferriereR$4.10M45 pts
Brian DumoulinD$4.00M12 pts
Joel EdmundsonD$3.85M15 pts
Erik HaulaC$3.60M30 pts
Samuel HeleniusC$0.88M5 pts
Taylor WardR$0.88M5 pts

Biggest cap hits

Drew DoughtyD$11.00Mfinal yr · M-NTC
Artemi PanarinL$11.00M1y left · NMC
Adrian KempeR$10.63M7y left · NMC
Kevin FialaL$7.88M2y left · M-NTC
Brandt ClarkeD$7.40M4y left
Quinton ByfieldC$6.25M2y left
Darcy KuemperG$5.25Mfinal yr · M-NTC
Cody CeciD$4.50M2y left · M-NTC

Cap hits from CapWages for the 26 men on file. A dash is a figure we do not have, usually a restricted free agent whose entry-level deal has lapsed, and those are left out of the committed total rather than counted as nothing.

The crease

GSAx last season, projected next 11 / 12
GSAx view
Kuemper
50 starts last season
GSAx / start
-0.912
lg -0.858148th
Shot quality faced
0.0716
lg 0.073136th hardest
0.4-2.513672
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-72 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
53 GS28 W (1635)0.901 SV%2.59 GAA
Forsberg
31 starts last season
GSAx / start
-0.749
lg -0.858163th
Shot quality faced
0.067
lg 0.07313th hardest
0.4-2.514182
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-82 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
31 GS17 W (1124)0.906 SV%2.91 GAA
GSAx is goals saved above expected — what the shots he faced were worth, minus what he actually allowed. Shown per start, because a backup cannot out-accumulate a starter but can out-perform him on a per-night basis. Shot quality faced is expected goals per shot: higher means he was hung out to dry more often, and the percentile is where that workload ranks among goalies with 15+ starts. Rolling form is a 10-start moving average — is he playing well lately; running total is the season's accumulated damage. Per-game GSAx is too noisy to read either from directly.

Every skater

the reference table · Overall is value as a z-score against the league, so +1.00 is a standard deviation above average 12 / 12
Forwards · 28
PlayerRoleOverallGPGAP / ifPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Artemi PanarinL1·PP1+2.2876295584.3/90250212131419-4128239ice time ↓PP1
Adrian KempeL1·PP1+1.7180323870.71622191163752+1438153372sell-highPP1
Kevin FialaL2·PP1+1.2477283159.1250201562844-91184285PP1
Quinton ByfieldL1·PP2+1.0680253055121175713946+4440110285
Mats ZuccarelloL2·PP1+0.9962163853.2/70200123213321-32354177PP1
Alex LaferriereL2·PP2+0.6580222445.2522012084522+4141253454ascending
Trevor MooreL3·PP2+0.3676172138.132166683813+45106272
Erik HaulaL3·PP20.0072121729.5811081004251-8434143250
Scott LaughtonL4-0.3669101020.7221031354534-7397179282ice time ↓
Joel ArmiaL4-0.3966911201386693525022104190
Corey Perry-0.4253101019.2/296069241551+1739107
Alex TurcotteL3-0.536361116.70070493222-219781151bounce-back
Jared WrightL4-0.895553810437130700101144
Grant Slukynsky-0.894535810326225160087119
Elton Hermansson-0.9718336/22102626106003662
Taylor Ward-1.0044335.300504815130563113
Francesco Pinelli-1.0120235/17102631119004268
Samuel Helenius-1.0358224.700441592144-2132180224
Kenny Connors-1.0514134/1800132084002841
Koehn Ziemmer-1.1012123/1500111773002435
Aatu Jamsen-1.1012213/140081773002432
Jimmy Lombardi-1.1010213/1700171766002340
Vojtech Cihar-1.146112/17009831001120
Kaleb Lawrence-1.1412022/100031875002528
Martin Chromiak-1.186011/12008831001119
Jan Jenik-1.223000/40024210068
Lane Pederson
Cole Guttman
Defence · 15
PlayerRoleOverallGPGAP / ifPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Brandt ClarkeD2·PP1+0.267172935.81101372614150+60167304PP1
Drew DoughtyD1·PP2-0.376251620.7/274183517234+50123206declining
Mikey AndersonD1-0.477841418006811512825+90243310
Erik Gustafsson-0.506231517.3/237070374825-10086155declining
Joel EdmundsonD2-0.597031315.22180869623+100182263
Brian DumoulinD3-0.737621011.90055478719-10134189ice time ↓
Cody CeciD3-0.898017801645211718-30169233declining
Scott Perunovich-0.9246167.2/131028235014-1073100
Henry Brzustewicz-1.0514134/16002220228004264
Angus Booth-1.1412022/1000316195003538
Jared Woolley-1.149112/12001314146002841
Jakub Dvorak-1.189101/1000913145002736
Otto Salin-1.1812101/700915194003443
Joe Hicketts-1.223000/300245200911
Kirill Kirsanov-1.223000/30003500088
Goalies · 3
GoalieGSWLOTLSV%GAASVSAGASHOGSAxGSAx/GS
Darcy Kuemper53281760.9012.59121913521343.7-45.6-0.912
Anton Forsberg31171330.9062.91842930883.0-23.2-0.749
Erik Portillo0

Projected record and projected ice time are model estimates; ranks, lines, projections and trend signals trace to real data.