Practice Day in Minnesota.
The Kings hit the ice at TRIA Rink in St. Paul earlier today for a full-team practice between games in Winnipeg and Minnesota.
And there were some changes.
Simply put, the Kings have given up too much, both in terms of goals against and offensive opportunities. The first step towards making some changes in those areas came today, in the form of new defensive pairings.
Today’s @LAKings defensive pairings
Dumoulin – Doughty
Edmundson – Clarke
Anderson – Ceci
— Zach Dooley (@DooleyLAK) October 12, 2025
Brian Dumoulin skated with Drew Doughty, which moved Mikey Anderson alongside Cody Ceci. The pairing of Joel Edmundson and Brandt Clarke remained together, with Jacob Moverare the extra defenseman during today’s skate.
“We don’t like our results so far, even though it’s early in the season, so it’ll take some time for us to kind of figure out who with who, when……so that’s all just a work in progress right now,” Head Coach Jim Hiller said after today’s practice. “We like the look of what we’ve got here, we’ll see what it looks like tomorrow.”
In terms of why the Kings made the exact changes they did, it begged one specific question for me. When you have two pairs that have been generally pretty effective but have seen a lot of goals against with the third, how do you balance wanting to make a change in one area but not fix what isn’t broken elsewhere? I think that a change being needed was pretty apparent, but to do so, an effective pairing would need to be broken up.
The decision made for today at least was to keep the Edmundson/Clarke pairing together, while splitting up Anderson and Doughty. To be clear, Anderson/Doughty were fine. Three goals for, two against and on the positive side of most metrics, while logging their most minutes against the MacKinnon, Eichel and Schiefele lines.
However, Hiller also highlighted the Edmundson/Clarke duo as playing very well early in the season and that’s a continuation of what we saw last year. Edmundson and Clarke haven’t been on the ice for a 5-on-5 goal against just yet and have gelled pretty well, with Edmundson’s style continuing to complement Clarke’s emerging game quite well. Ultimately, one of the two pairings needed to be broken up to make a change elsewhere and the Kings, for now, opted to go this way.
“Eddie and Clarkie have played really well, played well together last year, played really well to start this season, and so we just want a different look,” Hiller added today. “We’re just giving up too much and sometimes, changing things just a little bit sparks something, gives guys a fresh look and we’ll see what that brings tomorrow.”
Assuming these changes continue into tomorrow’s game against Minnesota, it’ll be interesting to see how the Kings deploy these pairings and how they look to matchup. Doughty/Anderson has been the desired matchup pair early in the season and considering Dumoulin’s comfort and strengths on the defensive side of the puck, I don’t see why those two can’t take on those matchups.
However, these pairs are not set in stone. Say the Kings start this way tomorrow, would I be surprised to see Anderson and Doughty take shifts together at certain points in the game? Not at all. But as a base alignment, it’s something different and that is certainly welcomed.
In talking with Dumoulin today, I found it very interesting what he had to say about partnering with Doughty. He likened Doughty’s style from his observations early in his time here to that of Kris Letang in Pittsburgh, who Dumoulin was teammates with for several seasons with the Penguins. Both right shots and future Hall of Famers, both responsible and purposeful defensively but possessing the abilities to move pucks creatively and effectively.
“Drew’s a guy I’ve been watching for a long time, especially in the early stages of the year, just seeing the type of player that he is, the plays that he makes, how he likes to hold on to the puck and make plays,” Dumoulin detailed. “Excited to be playing with him……definitely a lot of similarities to Kris Letang when I played with him. He’s very responsibly defensively, he’s very hard on pucks, very competitive, makes really good plays, and he has a lot of fun out there.”
Dumoulin has been around the block a few times so this isn’t exactly his first partner swap.
The Dumoulin/Ceci pairing has struggled early in the season, conceding five goals against in three games. Dumoulin spoke about the importance of being able to be versatile and play with different partners when the situation calls for it. He also spoke about adjusting to a few of the things that the Kings do differently than other teams, when it comes to breakouts and man-on-man coverage in the defensive zone, which is something the Kings do more aggressively than most teams. He also would like to be more shot-minded in the offensive zone when he has the opportunity. It’s also Game 4 and this is a veteran player who has done some things well, ranking tied for 14th in the NHL in successful pass breakups, per SportLOGIQ.
With all that being said, the points in October count as much as the points in April. Naturally, the Kings did not hope to make a change for Game 4. But there was a recognition of something not working and the coaching staff opted to make these moves for today.
Now, the Kings move onto another difficult opponent in Minnesota. Certainly no easing their way into this schedule, with Kirill Kaprizov and the Wild coming up tomorrow, off a game in which they totaled 52 shots on goal and scored four power-play goals in a losing effort.
Simply switching the pairs isn’t going to magically change certain defensive metrics the Kings have struggled with early this season. I think it will help, especially if Associate Coach D.J. Smith mixes and matches a bit, which he’s done effectively in his time here, but there are parts of the game the Kings need to improve in, regardless of who is on the ice together.
In speaking with Clarke, he felt that the first period against Vegas and the final 40 minutes against Winnipeg are a blueprint to follow, while acknowledging that overall, games with four and five goals against aren’t where the Kings need to be. There’s plenty of time to get it going and coming off a strong finish yesterday in Manitoba, there’s hope it could come for the Kings.
“We’ve let up some big numbers against these teams, five and we won that game, but not what we want to accomplish,” he said. “I think our main thing was our defensive zone last year and just the ability to kind of wear teams down and frustrate them, I don’t think we’ve done enough of that so far. I think we’ve given them a little too much and let them play around, let them get confident a little bit, so I think that’s point of us emphasis for us going forward, especially against a good, skilled team tomorrow. Just get back to what we do, shut them down, play down in the other zone, wear them down if they do get a chance, kill it right away and get back up down there. That’s what we do better than anyone else.”
One of the best and worst things of the NHL is that you’re always getting right back at it. Depends how you take it. Playing every other day, it’s a chance to immediately get an opportunity to improve. It can also be difficult to make impactful changes. The Kings have improvements to make. Right back into it tomorrow to see if today’s changes help.
Minnesota@LAKings are on the ice for a full-team practice day, in advance of tomorrow’s game with the Wild. pic.twitter.com/lx2wEUQVKI
— Zach Dooley (@DooleyLAK) October 12, 2025