SAN DIEGO, CA — The Los Angeles Kings are 15 games into the 2026–27 season at 5–8–2 with 12 points, a pace that projects to roughly 67 points over the newly expanded 84-game schedule. That follows a 90-point campaign that ended with Colorado sweeping them out of the first round, the fifth consecutive postseason without a series win.
67 points won't do, and in all reality, even with their roster flaws, the Kings should be well above that mark. Fifteen games don't lose a season, and a few of the Kings’ menacing wingers have kept this team out of a freefall. The warning signs, though, are years old, and every season makes them harder to reconcile with an organization that insists it remains in a competitive window.
The coaches have changed, the veterans have changed, and some of the contracts have changed, yet the trajectory still points toward the league's cellar despite an accumulation of assets from 2016 to 2022 that rivaled any franchise in hockey at the time. Management has spent so long preserving its current window that it has jeopardized the construction of the next one, and its lack of vision on that front is a red flag of its own.
That is where Detroit defenseman Simon Edvinsson comes in, as something increasingly rare in the Kings' organizational trajectory: an acquisition that improves the immediate roster while becoming part of the foundation that replaces it.
The Prospect Surplus
Go back to the summer of 2021. Over the previous five years, Los Angeles had drafted Gabe Vilardi, Rasmus Kupari, Alex Turcotte, Tobias Björnfot, Arthur Kaliyev, Akil Thomas, Samuel Fagemo, Quinton Byfield and Brock Faber, and outlet after outlet ranked that group as the finest prospect pool in hockey or close to it.
The right side of the defensive pipeline was an embarrassment of riches. Faber, Jordan Spence, Helge Grans, Sean Durzi and newly drafted Brandt Clarke formed an extraordinary backlog behind young NHL defensemen Matt Roy, a 2015 Kings pick, and Sean Walker, an undrafted free agent signing. Faber, Spence, Grans and Clarke were Kings picks, while Durzi arrived by shedding the past in the Jake Muzzin trade, and all of them meant depth and flexibility.
Five consecutive first-round exits later, chasing something that was always fleeting, most of that surplus is gone, and the group as a whole never became the foundation Los Angeles once envisioned. The Kings are left trialing scant internal options and searching outside the organization for answers at positions that once looked locked down—all while spent to the cap.
The erosion is visible in the ice time. Players selected by Los Angeles between 2016 and 2021 accounted for approximately 38.5 percent of the Kings' total skater minutes in 2024–25, Rob Blake's final season as general manager when the team produced their best season since 2016. That share dropped to 31.2 percent in 2025–26 and sits at roughly 31.5 percent through the first 15 games of 2026–27. The more recent draft classes have yet to replace that lost workload, with selections from 2022 onward accounting for just 1.3 percent of the team's skater minutes this season.
Those numbers expose a franchise whose original accumulation of draft capital is contributing a markedly smaller share of its NHL workload than it did two seasons ago, while the next generation remains largely unprepared to assume those responsibilities.
The Archetype Los Angeles Keeps Missing
At 23, Edvinsson is the archetype Los Angeles has spent years trying to find. Detroit took the 6-foot-6 Swedish left shot sixth overall in 2021, and last season he averaged 22:21 a night, recorded 25 points in 72 games, and carried significant responsibility alongside Moritz Seider. At five-on-five, Detroit controlled about 51.7 percent of expected goals with Edvinsson on the ice, nearly seven percentage points better than without him.
Those numbers carry an asterisk, since much of that success came beside Seider, one of the league's premier young defensemen, and no one should assume Edvinsson reproduces it immediately with a new partner. The workload, age, mobility and defensive range still separate him from most speculative trade targets, and he is the big defenseman the Kings keep claiming they want, except this one actually has the feet to back up the frame.
Clarke went two picks after Edvinsson in that same 2021 draft. Five years later, bringing together two defensemen from the same class could give the Kings the foundation their once-vaunted prospect pipeline was supposed to deliver.
Edvinsson is not a prospect who might become a top-four defenseman; he already is one, with the tools to grow into significantly more. In Los Angeles, he would step straight into the top left-side slot alongside Clarke, establishing a defensive foundation while the franchise figures out the assortment of Angus Booth, Kirill Kirsanov, Jakub Dvorak, and Henry Brzustewicz as part of the longer-term succession plan for the defensive corps.
Edvinsson remains an unsigned restricted free agent with a December 1 deadline to sign and stay eligible this season, and Detroit interim general manager Shawn Horcoff, who previously insisted he had no interest in moving him, recently acknowledged that while signing Edvinsson remains his preference, he is willing to listen to offers.
No credible public reporting places the Kings in those talks, but the circumstances open a rare window to consider what a player of his age and caliber means for a franchise facing exactly this problem.
One Acquisition, Two Competitive Windows
An Edvinsson and Clarke pairing would unite two players entering their primes together and give Los Angeles the mobile, offensively capable top pairing it has lacked since its championship-era core declined. Edvinsson's skating, reach and gap control complement Clarke's offensive instincts and puck movement, and while the pair would need time in defensive-zone coverage and tough matchups, the long-term fit is evident.
It would also change Byfield's circumstances. The Kings' defense has struggled for years to generate consistent controlled exits and transition offense, and for a center whose game depends on pace, interior creation and attacking off movement, that deficiency directly limits what he can produce. A mobile defenseman capable of handling heavy minutes addresses an environmental weakness that has followed Byfield's development.
Then there is the succession question around Doughty. Holland said on November 7 that he expects Doughty back next season, though an extension has not been finalized, and Doughty has yet to cede much ice time even at this stage of his career. Adding Edvinsson reshapes the hierarchy of the entire defense corps and gives that succession a clear answer.
By 2028–29, Los Angeles could have Byfield at 26 and Clarke and Edvinsson at 25, three critical positions cemented by high-impact players and a foundation with a far different age profile than the one currently contending under a false narrative.
Funny, I wouldn't consider #GoKingsGo to be in any semblance of a 'window,' but given Panarin's age + Kempe and Fiala, the drop-off moving forward could be problematic.
— Connor Doyle (@LordsOfTheRinks) November 6, 2026
The team has also locked in trade clauses on most of the D and has spent to the cap.
Not a good build. pic.twitter.com/Rv3nswvgmo
The Price of Changing Direction
Detroit has invested years developing Edvinsson, and Horcoff has made clear the organization sees him as integral to its future, so prying him loose would take significant assets.
Alex Laferriere is the intriguing centerpiece, an established young NHL forward rather than a speculative prospect. Laferriere has been thriving after last season’s trial-by-fire move to center, accumulating points faster than Byfield this season, centering their two most imposing weapons on the flanks. With Dylan Larkin suspended and seeking a trade, Laferriere would offer Detroit an established young center capable of helping address the uncertainty surrounding its most important position. The Kings also hold recent premium draft investments that could interest a retooling organization.
Surrendering Laferriere, multiple top prospects and valuable picks, however, would recreate the very problem Los Angeles needs to solve, so a deal only works if the Kings keep enough young talent and draft capital to build around Edvinsson. Byfield and Clarke are untouchable in this conversation given a plausible push for the next competitive window, not this obscure one in the present season.
The money matters too, since a substantial new contract for Edvinsson has to fit alongside the Kings' existing veteran commitments, and Detroit may turn down a package if retention is involved.
Not to quote No Doubt, but underneath it all, the Kings have spent years trading future capital to prop up an existing window, and an Edvinsson deal would spend it to build the next one while improving the present roster along the way.
The Inflection Point
The organization has not entered a rebuild and is not considering one, since a franchise does not bring in Ken Holland, Peter Laviolette and Artemi Panarin to tear it down, yet it also has not shown that this roster can contend for a Stanley Cup. That leaves the Kings in the NHL's most uncomfortable territory, built to win now without the results to justify the cost, spent to the cap, and carrying an emerging generation that still lacks a supportive, fleshed-out schematic of young talent to bolster a claim to be a contender in its own right.
The Kings can keep their veterans and play out this season, as long as the next meaningful acquisition serves a different objective. Among young defensemen whose contract situations have created a plausible trade opening, few offer Edvinsson's combination of NHL readiness, positional need and prime-age alignment. Los Angeles cannot keep buying one more year for a window that has repeatedly failed to deliver, and if this franchise wants a move that is as valuable three seasons from now as it is today, Edvinsson is exactly the type of player Holland should be pursuing.
Kurt Helin
Raphielle Johnson
