The practices have been few and far between for the Kings since the regular season got underway last month.
Not including morning skates, only some of which have included the full playing roster, there have been just seven team practices in the past 24 days leading up to this morning’s on-ice session.
That’s due to the amount of travel and limited time off the team has had during the first month of the campaign, but Monday represented a day to get back to work with more time spent on skills with the coaching staff.
Notably, there were changes to the team’s formation, both up front and on the back end.
Here’s how the team lined up for drills this morning –
Armia – Kopitar – Kempe
Fiala – Byfield – Laferriere
Kuzmenko – Danault – Moore
Malott – Turcotte – Perry
Helenius
Anderson – Doughty
Edmundson – Clarke
Dumoulin – Ceci
Kuemper / Forsberg
Starting with the forwards, Joel Armia received reps on the team’s No. 1 line alongside Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe. Armia has been shuffled around quite a bit both during games and practices, and has had a chance to get to know the rest of the attackers in the lineup. Now, it seems he’ll be trusted with playing alongside the team’s captain and leading scorer.
“In the offensive zone, he’s a presence around the net, under the goal line hanging on to pucks. I think one thing we’ve seen from Joel is that he has the ability to do that,” Head Coach Jim Hiller said after today’s practice. “He’s at the net for sure, he can hold on to it a little bit and maybe get Kopi and Juice there for some support, and just basically play the game he’s played so far.”
Armia has helped chip in offensively with a modest six points from his first 13 games as a member of the Kings, but the attributes Hiller mentioned above have made him a versatile forward capable of playing anywhere in the lineup and contributing in different roles.
The Finnish attacker said he was looking forward to the chance to play with some of the team’s top players but wasn’t viewing it as anything more than a new opportunity.
“They’re great players, obviously,” Armia said. “I had fun on the ice [during practice], for sure. I’m going to try to be heavy on the forecheck and try to get the puck to those guys and create more space for them to play because they’re so skilled with the puck and can make plays.”
The other side of the coin to the lineup change, however, is that for the first time since he was acquired at the trade deadline from Philadelphia, Andrei Kuzmenko won’t be on the ice alongside Kopitar and Kempe.
Kuzmenko snapped a six-game goal scoring drought on Saturday when he netted the Kings’ lone tally against the Devils, and has seven points (3-4=7) from the team’s 13 contests this season. His new spot was with the other two forwards who have been a pair together for multiple seasons, in Phillip Danault and Trevor Moore.
It wasn’t that Kuzmenko was a prolific scorer after he came to the Kings for the stretch run last season, scoring five times in 22 regular season appearances, all of which came at even strength, but he was a clear fit with Kopitar and Kempe, posting 12 assists and a plus-6 rating. And he was the missing piece that helped the power play produce at a much higher clip, adding five man-advantage helpers.
Maybe for the Kings, this move is as much about trying to help Danault and Moore, who combined have only two even-strength goals between the two of them and are missing the third member of their usual trio in Warren Foegele, who is out of the lineup with an injury, as it is about Kuzmenko, who Hiller complimented after Saturday night’s loss.
But that wasn’t the only change made that affected Kuzmenko, who was also replaced on the team’s primary power play unit by Corey Perry during the reps they took this morning.
Perry has had the hot hand since joining the lineup in St. Louis, scoring five times and adding a pair of assists to total seven points in seven games. Perry assumed the net-front role with that unit, which is exactly where he’s been to score all of his goals.
Kuzmenko was working with Danault and Alex Laferriere on the second group, as well as defenders Drew Doughty and Brandt Clarke.
“We’re hoping that Kuzy gets to touch the puck more on the second power play,” Hiller said. “Now, he probably doesn’t want to be there, but now hopefully he’s getting it more. For whatever reasons, he wasn’t getting the puck enough with that first unit. The end of last year, it kind of ran through Kuzy a lot and we just weren’t getting him the puck. So we hope to rest him a little bit and get him the puck and allow him to use some better creativity with the second unit.”
As it relates to the team’s defensive alignment, the change today was a return to where they began the year, with Mikey Anderson moving back up to the top pair and reuniting with Doughty. The middle pair of Joel Edmundson and Brandt Clarke was untouched, and Brian Dumoulin, who has been alongside Doughty since a change on Oct. 12, was back to being deployed alongside Cody Ceci.
While they haven’t been paired together at 5-on-5 in three weeks, Dumoulin and Ceci have still been on the ice together as penalty killers and now it seems as if they’ll be relied on in more situations moving forward.
The split was necessary after the team’s defense wasn’t performing up to expectations during the first week of the season. But another result of that move was seeing Mikey Anderson, one of the team’s best blueliners, play much less as a member of the third pair.
Hiller mentioned Anderson’s minutes as one of the primary reasons for returning to what the club hoped would be how the defenders could be deployed at the start of the year.
“Mikey hasn’t been playing as much lately, certainly not as much as he played last season when Drew wasn’t there. So it’s about making sure that Mikey knows that he’s a really critical piece for us and our team and our success and has been for a long time.”
In referencing last season, Hiller and his staff had Anderson on the ice for an average of 22:41, a career-high and a jump of over two more minutes on average than the year prior in 2023-24. After the pairings changed and he has shifted to playing more with Ceci at 5-on-5, Anderson’s only logged 20 minutes of ice time on five occasions. After Hiller commented that he would try to find more time for Clarke when the team returned from their most recent five-game road trip last week, Anderson’s last two games only saw him play 15:24 and 15:57 while Clarke’s time went up to season highs, 20:14 and 21:27.
Expecting to see some more urgency from the Kings on Tuesday, as they search for their first win of 2025-26 at Crypto.com Arena. If I’m being honest, that’s not something I expected to type in the month of November.
More to come tomorrow as LA gets ready to battle Winnipeg for the second time this season, with this one coming on home ice.